Why You Should NOT Invest in Animal Health
Let’s be honest, animal health is not an easy place to make money as an investor. For decades, insiders have repeated the same narrative: great fundamentals, resilient demand, strategic interest. And yet, for many investors, returns have been inconsistent, timelines long, and exits unpredictable. At Brakke Consulting, we’ve heard this frustration for years, and it’s not wrong, and it is not going away.
Compared to sectors like energy or real estate, animal health often looks inefficient. Deals are smaller, markets are fragmented, and scaling can be painfully slow. Regulatory pathways, while faster than human pharma, are still complex enough to delay value creation. Meanwhile, capital is tied up for years with limited liquidity options.
There’s also a structural issue: too many companies chasing too little specialized capital. Unlike tech or clean energy, animal health lacks a deep, broad and educated investor base. As a result, many good companies struggle to get funded, and investors struggle to find high-quality, de-risked opportunities. That’s not a great combination.
And let’s not ignore another uncomfortable truth: we’ve been talking about these problems for decades. Conferences, panels, white papers … same issues, same conclusions, very little structural change. At some point, repeating the narrative becomes part of the problem.
So why invest at all? Because inefficiency creates opportunity and open the door for meaningful changes. Better curation, smarter capital structures, and a more engaged investor base could unlock incredible value. Until then, the question stands: is your money better deployed elsewhere … or are you waiting for an opportunity to participate?
Alexis Nahama
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