Mastitis is the most expensive disease in dairy farming and causes significant pain in affected cows. Effective prevention and treatment serve both animal welfare and economic interests.
Mastitis is a welfare problem with unusual alignment between ethical and economic interests: the pain inflicted by mastitis causes genuine suffering that also reduces milk production and increases treatment costs. This alignment should make mastitis prevention a priority on welfare and economic grounds simultaneously. Yet mastitis prevalence remains high in many herds because prevention requires consistent hygiene protocols that are difficult to maintain under production pressures. The subclinical mastitis problem is particularly insidious from a welfare perspective — chronic low-grade udder inflammation causes persistent discomfort that is invisible to observers but measurable in somatic cell counts. Effective mastitis management programs that reduce both clinical and subclinical prevalence represent direct welfare improvements for millions of cows.