Early, Real-Time, On-Farm, DIY Detection of Mastitis Pathogens, Using Your Smartphone: Now Seeking a Strategic Partner

By Dr. Sharon Gotteiner, CPA

Dr. Sharon Gotteiner is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) specializing in the assessment of the financial feasibility of new business ventures, business models, and deal structures. Dr. Gotteiner has extensive experience working with technology startups and established corporations worldwide, catalyzing strategic initiatives aimed at improving financial performance and enterprise valuation. Academic background: PhD in Strategic Management (UIC, Barcelona, Spain). Co-author of highly cited academic publications, including Fighting organizational decline: a risk-based approach to organizational anti-aging, Turnaround types, stages, strategies, and tactics: Putting things in order, and The OPTIMAL MBO: A model for effective management-by-objectives implementation.

This new non-cultivation technology has the potential to become a real alternative to standard practices, in a near future. Collaboration opportunities are now being pursued. 

While bovine mastitis is commonly detected through routine lab tests, it is often too late to prevent illness, and a breakout. Such culture-based tests take a few days until the results are available and by that time, an already-existing infection would worsen. In addition, since such tests indicate the somatic cell count (SCC), they would typically yield negative results at the subclinical stage, when SCC is yet to indicate an infection. The probability of getting a false-negative result for such commonly-used lab tests has been estimated at 20-50% (source).

Consequently, mastitis is one of the most significant challenges that dairy farms face worldwide, with considerable economic, operational, and animal welfare implications. Clinical cases would trigger losses of milk production, discarded milk, veterinary expenses, excess labor for monitoring and treatment, and losses due to premature culling. All in all, the cost of clinical mastitis has been estimated at 444 USD per case in the US (source), and 662 CAD per case in Canada (source). These costs, with geographic adjustments, apply to most of dairy farms around the world, as around 20–30% of dairy cows are diagnosed with a mastitis episode, at least once during lactation (source).

A new “lab on chip” (LoC) technology, that can be applied through standard smartphones on-farm – is now offering a quick and handy alternative to the commonly used method of SCC lab testing. This technology involves miniature, optical biosensors that use nanomaterials to detect mastitis pathogens such as e. coli, klebsiella spp, streptococcus uberis, and streptococcus dysgalactiae. Detection is achieved within 60 minutes, for batches of tens of tests, at sensitivity level of 10 CFU/mL, using a standard smartphone camera. No cultivation is required. As such, this technology enables onsite, real time, quick DYI detection of current or even subclinical mastitis, for immediate triggering of treatment or prevention activities.

Future dairy-market regulation around the world is expected to require the usage of on-farm solutions, sooner or later, to better control milk quality, and reduce the wide usage of antibiotics in the dairy industry. However, emerging, other on-farm solutions:

• Typically involve cultivation kits, which may be too cumbersome to use for farmers, and may require investments in dedicated facilities.
• Allow for testing only a few cows per kit – not tens of batches at one shot.
• Allow for getting the results after about a day – not within just one hour.

Therefore, this technology provides the opportunity of getting ahead of regulatory requirements and competition, and leading the market for on-farm microbiological tests.

The Company is now seeking collaboration opportunities for final product development, pilots, and commercialization.