Predicting Illness for a Sustainable Dairy Agriculture: Predicting and Explaining the Onset of Mastitis in Dairy Cows

TL;DR

This paper presents a machine learning system that predicts mastitis in dairy cows and explains these predictions with counterfactuals, aiming to improve sustainable dairy farming and reduce antibiotic use.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel AI-based system that predicts mastitis onset and provides interpretable explanations, engaging farmers to enhance trust and decision-making.

Findings

System effectively predicts mastitis risk in dairy cows.

Counterfactual explanations improve user trust and understanding.

Engagement with farmers informs system development.

Abstract

Mastitis is a billion dollar health problem for the modern dairy industry, with implications for antibiotic resistance. The use of AI techniques to identify the early onset of this disease, thus has significant implications for the sustainability of this agricultural sector. Current approaches to treating mastitis involve antibiotics and this practice is coming under ever increasing scrutiny. Using machine learning models to identify cows at risk of developing mastitis and applying targeted treatment regimes to only those animals promotes a more sustainable approach. Incorrect predictions from such models, however, can lead to monetary losses, unnecessary use of antibiotics, and even the premature death of animals, so it is important to generate compelling explanations for predictions to build trust with users and to better support their decision making. In this paper we demonstrate a system developed to predict mastitis infections in cows and provide explanations of these predictions using counterfactuals. We demonstrate the system and describe the engagement with farmers undertaken to build it.