Mastitis is the most costly and welfare-damaging disease in dairy farming. Understanding prevention and management reduces suffering for millions of dairy cows worldwide.
Mastitis welfare impact is enormous in scale — tens of millions of cow-episodes of udder pain annually worldwide. Clinical mastitis causes obvious pain, fever, and systemic illness. Subclinical mastitis causes chronic pain that cows cannot verbalize but is measurable through somatic cell counts and behavioral changes. Prevention is far more effective than treatment: pre- and post-milking teat dipping, clean dry cow housing, adequate lying space, and good milking machine maintenance reduce incidence dramatically. High somatic cell count milk — a mastitis indicator — is a welfare signal that correlates with herd welfare status. Welfare-certified dairy farms consistently show lower mastitis incidence than uncertified ones.