Mastitis Costs The Dairy Industry $32 Billion A Year. Julia Somerdin Is Trying To Change That

Forbes

6 days ago

J ulia Somerdin's test subjects line up for work before dawn, their tails swishing at flies as a robotic milking machine attaches to their udders to complete work once done by a farmer's hands. Somerdin has a particular interest in the robotic milking agents—and specifically, the ways in which this 21st century technology is still failing to solve a challenge to milk production as old as dairy farming itself: mastitis.
The bacterial infection of the udder can spread through a herd, reducing milk supply and requiring milk be discarded. This not only causes pain for the animal but added expenses for farms. Somerdin is building a tool, via her agtech startup Labby, that can detect an infected cow from a rise in immune cells in her milk—often before the cow begins to show physical symptoms.
Early detection is key on big, busy farms where farmers don't have the time to check on every cow, every day, Somerdin says. 'The really important thing is they give their time and resources to the cow who truly needs attention,' Somerdin tells Forbes . 'It's like a classroom; your teachers need to pay attention to the kids who need help, not to the kids who don't need help.'
Each case of mastitis can cost as much as $500 in lower production and lost product per cow, and on any given month farmers will have two- to five percent of their cows suffering from the contagious infection. The condition affects 250 million cows each year, worldwide, costing the global dairy industry $32 billion.
Somerdin, one of the listees on the 2025 Forbes 50 Over 50, is working to change these statistics, and she's doing so with Labby, the milk-testing startup she developed through MIT. Labby's system, MilKey (the dairy world loves a pun) uses a combination of advanced imaging technology and includes a device that looks like a handheld Game Boy to capture data from milk samples in real time. An AI-powered algorithm analyses the milk's composition for fat, protein and somatic cell count, which detects if the cow's immune system is responding to an infection. The data is then delivered to the farmer through a cell phone app, and the idea is to alert the farmer to an infection before a cow shows symptoms—and well before the current farming practice of batch testing milk after it's taken from a farm. 50 Over 50: 2025 Our fifth annual list of 200 women who are redefining what's possible in life's second half. VIEW THE FULL LISTST
'We all know in the past 20 years how big data has transformed human health,' Somerdin says. 'More and more we realize how animal health is connected to human health.'
Somerdin has been clear on the need-case for her Rochester, New York-based company since she launched it in 2017. But the path from concept to market success has been neither fast nor smooth. In this way, she has much in common with the small dairy farmers struggling to keep their family enterprises going. 'I know exactly why I'm doing this: to make a real impact, to solve overlooked problems in agriculture, and to show what's possible when you don't give up — even when the odds say you should,' she says.
Born in China and an electrical engineer by training, Somerdin spent the first half of her career building the business aspects of technology platforms that solve complex problems in telecommunications and defense. She earned an MBA at Northeastern University and in 2013 she started a graduate program in systems design and management at MIT. There she met cofounder Anshuman Das, a postdoc physicist with expertise in optics, imaging and materials science.
Somerdin said she didn't know anything about dairy farming then—although she'd spent summers on her grandfather's farm in China—but wanted to pursue a mission-driven startup idea. Das and engineer Akshat Wahi were patenting a new mobile fluid testing technology that felt like a perfect fit for the $990 billion global dairy industry. From this, Labby was born.
Out of the gate, Labby accumulated startup competition wins and modest investments from both in the U.S. and Europe. The company was selected for the Techstars Lisbon Accelerator program in 2020 and the Dairy Farmers of America innovation program. It's been awarded two non-dilutive U.S. Small Business Innovation Research grants totaling more than $1.25 million. But like farming, Labby was a lot of work without immediate returns; by 2022 Somerdin said the company used up its resources and had become a one-woman operation. 'Most startups fold under those conditions. But I didn't,' she says.
Later that year, Labby won $250,000 in the Grow-NY competition and that opened the door to a prestigious hardware accelerator in Rochester. Somerdin relocated the company from Boston to Rochester to be closer to upstate dairy farmers. More grants followed and Labby now has a team of eight. Today, the company's business model is based on revenue streams from the hardware and a per cow/per day data collection and analysis subscription. Labby is prices its systems on a farm-by-farm basis depending on how milking parlors are set up and how many cows are to be monitored.
'It has that predictive capability, whether the problem is going to happen in a few hours or a few days. That can make a huge difference in economic return or resource allocation,' Somerdin explains, noting there is also industry-wide value in the collective data Labby eventually will amass.
'Why do I do this? Help the dairy, help the people, help the planet.' Julia Somerdin, Labby cofounder and CEO
Labby has been testing and validating its system at the Cornell Agriculture Systems Testbed and Demonstration Site (CAST) for the Farm of the Future. CAST's director, Professor Julio Giordano, says that what makes Labby unique is it can be used in any milking parlor and integrate other data streams, such as environmental readings, farmers collect. There are other technologies that capture the same data as Labby's technology, he said, but much of that technology is specific to the milking parlor systems they're attached to. Labby's flexibility makes it unique.
'Data integration is one of the biggest challenges we are facing now,' Giordano says, referring to the wider dairy industry. 'There's so many diverse data streams on farms, from sensors to non-sensor systems, the challenge is putting them together in ways that can be truly useful.'
In May, Labby's first commercial installation at the SmartHolstein Lab in Bowling Green, Kentucky, went live. Jeffrey Bewley, the executive director of genetics and innovation for Holstein Association USA and a partner in the SmartHolstein Lab, says that cows already are outfitted with a bovine version of a FitBit to monitor how much they are eating, ruminating and moving as markers of good health. But at more than 1,000 pounds each, cows can be clumsy and curious, nosing at wires and cameras installed in barns. Labby accounts for those challenges in its contactless design and housing, Bewley explains. 'There's no moving parts and no downside to measuring continuously,' he says. 'It can run as long as the milking parlor is running.'
Bewley grew up on a dairy farm and went on to earn a PhD at Purdue University researching precision dairy farming technologies, so he's seen his fair share of dairy innovations. Labby's other value proposition, he says, is that it can essentially be 'always on,' accounting for the fact that at larger dairies, milking parlors can run as much as 22 hours a day.
'This allows us to have multiple eyes on the cows throughout the day and know when they are saying, 'Something is up with me,'' he says. 'It's about the health and well-being of the animal and everyone wants the animal to be well-cared for. This is a tool in the toolbox to do that.'
As for Somerdin, she's focused on the bigger picture of how Labby might improve life at the dairy, not just in tending cows but for farmers who need more efficient systems to produce a high-quality product that keeps consumers satisfied and keeps farms financially viable while making supply chains more productive.
'When I started, a farmer in Massachusetts said, 'Julia, I don't need a toy,'' she said. 'Why do I do this? Help the dairy, help the people, help the planet.' More from Forbes Forbes 50 Over 50: Investment By Maggie McGrath Forbes 50 Over 50: Impact By Maggie McGrath Forbes 50 Over 50: Innovation By Maggie McGrath Forbes 50 Over 50: Lifestyle By Maggie McGrath Forbes 50 Over 50 Global: 2025 By Maggie McGrath Forbes Meet The Judges For The 2024 50 Over 50 List By Maggie McGrath Forbes The Age Of Disruption: Meet The 50 Over 50 2023 By Maggie McGrath