Original article published on drkarenbecker.com
Educator, Formulator
Dr. Becker loves to teach. She gave her first educational presentation to a group of wildlife rehabilitators at the age of 13 and has been passionate about animal education ever since. Dr. Becker teaches and lectures worldwide to pet parents, progressive veterinarians, industry professionals and students. She is committed to improving corporate transparency and food quality within the Pet Food Industry, as well as the nutritional standards currently utilized for commercial pet food.
In 2009, Dr. Becker collaborated with Dr. Joseph Mercola, a human health and wellness doctor and pioneer, to create a companion animal resource website that quickly grew to become the world’s biggest pet wellness website. In addition to formulating human grade supplements to improve animal health, she offers a free Healthypets daily newsletter. The newsletter, along with an archive of hundreds of her pet wellness videos on Youtube, gives people around the world easy access to animal health and wellness information, advice and tips. Dr. Becker also offers daily pet wellness and healthcare tips on her Facebook page and is a regular blogger at Huffington Post.
In 2014 she co-founded the non-profit organization the Companion Animal Nutrition and Wellness Institute (CANWI) with board certified veterinary nutritionist, Dr. Donna Raditic, due to the lack of university-based, independent pet food research available to the general public. CANWI’s mission is to provide unbiased, science-based pet food research free to the public, the first grass roots organization of its kind in the world. The first research project (evaluating Advanced Glycation End Products in raw, dry and canned foods) has been fully funded and is currently underway. Their goal is to share these results with pet food manufacturers worldwide so that the entire Industry can improve their products, which will ultimately result in healthier animals.
In 2017 Dr. Becker partnered with digital artist Rodney Habib to film the “The Dog Cancer Series.” After interviewing the top veterinary oncologists, cancer researchers and metabolic specialists from around the world they assembled a ground-breaking documentary investigating the cancer epidemic in dogs. The documentary includes detailed information from the great team at KetoPet Sanctuary about how to implement a ketogenic diet as a profound nutritional intervention and strategy against this devastating disease.
Dr. Becker consults with a variety of animal health and wellness companies. She and veteran pet food formulator Steve Brown regularly collaborate to co-formulate balanced, fresh food recipes for many small, ethical pet food companies including Darwin’s, Raw Bistro Pet Fare, HumanKind, Balanced Blends and Raised Right, among others.
Click the video above to see Dr. Becker’s TEDx talk on animal health and nutrition.