Last February, I committed to using unorthodox means to provide honest answers to tough questions about raw milk, via my latest book, The Raw Milk Answer Book. I decided to self-publish the book, in part so I could price it lower than a commercial publisher would. I launched a crowdfunding campaign to help raise funds for effectively targeted promotion.
Now, the final piece of the puzzle has come together—The Raw Milk Answer Book is available in audio format. That means people who don’t have the time or inclination to read the book can listen to it while driving, cooking in the kitchen or doing other things.
Much to my amazement, the audio book was quite an involved project. I knew it was more than just dictating into a recorder, but I didn’t realize how much more. Maybe the best way to explain it is that there are lots of ways to screw up an audio book, such as via poor quality sound, background noise, too many pauses, uninteresting reader voices, and a variety of other technical issues. Indeed, in order to get the book accepted by ACX, the Amazon platform that now accounts for something on the order of 50% of all audio books, you have to pass a strict quality control process.
I was fortunate to have met a highly professional audio guy a couple years back, Paul Driftmier during some filming I was involved with about Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger. He runs an audio lab, Phat Pipes LLC, out of his house in Verona, WI. He also helped me recruit Madison naturopath Rosanne Lindsay to take on the task of posing the book’s more than 200 questions to me. We spent four days recording the book, and then Paul spent countless hours editing out extraneous noise, pauses, and such….and then responding to small technical concerns from ACX quality control.
The result if I don’t say so myself, is a highly professional, even entertaining, rendition of The Raw Milk Answer Book. Certainly more lively than the printed version. It now becomes more the “conversation” I envisioned when I wrote the book.
The timing of this new version of the book is opportune, because it coincides with a major review by food writer and blogger Sandrine Love, who oversees the Nourishing Our Children educational initiative. She not only has very nice things to say about the book, but does an excellent job of previewing it via excerpts from the book about raw milk safety.
I suggest you take a look at her review-synopsis, and also consider buying the book in any of its three versions—paper, digital, audio—via this link to Amazon; it is the link for Sandrine’s Nourishing Our Children, and enables her organization to gain affiliate revenues, without affecting the book’s pricing. In fact, the pricing of the audio version at Amazon is significantly discounted over what it is in other places.
A few odds and ends: This weekend, I’ll be attending the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund’s Food Freedom Festival and Polyface Farm Tour—personally escorting two winners of the Polyface Farm Tour from my crowdfunding campaign.
The Raw Milk Answer Book is also one of several prizes awarded to FTCLDF donors, as part of its 2015 Annual Appeal, ending on Saturday.
And based on the book, I’m due to participate in a discussion about raw milk on NPR’s Boston station, WBUR, beginning at 3 pm (Eastern) on Monday, August 17.
Perfect for my drive to NYC in a couple of weeks 🙂
Congratulations!
Congrats David….radical medium to educate!!
I learned today from a very astute raw milk activist in Humboldt County CA that in 2011 laws were broken during the Humbodlt Revolt. Some of you may remember that a group of passionate raw milk advocates attempted to convince the Humboldt Board of Supv to overturn and change their local ordinance and allow the sake of raw milk. Humboldt is one of only three counties in CA that refuses to follow CA state law on allow the sale of state inspected raw milk. In fact OPDC trucks drive through Humboldt County twice each week in order to deliver to Delnorte County north of Humboldt to deliver raw milk….but not in the natural food stores in Humboldt….they simply starve.
It was discovered this week, that all of the documents that were submitted to the board of supervisors by raw milk advocates…never became a part of the official record. Not one of them. Even though the video tape of the hearings show the pro raw milk documents being read aloud and being referred too…..yet all of the anti raw milk documents became part of the administrative record. This is a clear violation of public meeting law and shows the impunity and corrupt nature of little old Humboldt County.
There appears to be great interest in a version 2….Raw Milk Humboldt Revolt Spring Uprising. Stay tuned!! This time there are all new supervisors and the old guard at the health department are now gone. This time we will know their dirty little tricks and we will take no prisoners. Humboldt Ag Commisioner will provide advice for growing marijuana….but raw milk is a no no,.
Shame on Humboldt. They have another thing commin!!! Breaking public records and open hearing laws….there is a good chance somebody could get into real trouble. Secrets….dirty little secrets have a way of coming back to really expose true corruption.
another example of how = the Truth hurts, is; this recent decision over-turning an “ag Gag” law
….
… as de-sensitized as it is on so many issues, the conscience of the nation can still be reached when evidence of unspeakable brutality is thrust in front of it. Concern for animal welfare is one of the major motivators in the Campaign for REAL MILK.
…. Ben Carson finally got the message out on national tv : “black lives matter” too, when they’re murdered in the womb. Will Ham-mericans respond appropriately ? to evidence of what the business of Planned Barren-hood was, and continues to be, since that horror-story first broke, back in ~1994
URL didn’t make it into my last post
http://www.cornucopia.org/2015/08/judge-idahos-anti-dairy-spying-law-is-unconstitutional/?utm_source=eNews&utm_medium=email&utm_content=8.15.15&utm_campaign=AgGagMORE
One more little piece of corruption to chew on. Last week CDFA sent out official letters requesting comment on an Emergency Request for Standard Of Identity…..guess who was the requester???? Fairlife!!
CDFA found that a True Regulatory Emergency Existed because Fairlife needed a new never before seen SOI that would allow Fairlife to make a new better than milk…milk. What is this uber milk? It is a CAFO raised, ultra high temp pasteurized, low fat, ultra filtered, lactose reduced, protein increased product made from milk….it sure is not milk. This was a regulatory Emergency!!!!
I was going to respond with comment…..but the letter arrived one day after the five day deadline for comments had passed. Another regulatory slight of hand.
OPDC had submitted two SOI requests in the past….both summarily denied. Fairlife….it is an Emergency to get it done. What a true wake up see and observe the connected crowd that runs Sacramento and our regulatory community.
Meanwhile…..I suppose it is an Emergency when the dairy industry is failing and they need to reengineer milk…cause what they have right now won’t sell. So what if they make another Frsnkin Food that is so Adulterated. It won’t sell either.
To quote Andy Rooney…..”if dairymen want to sell more milk…they should try selling what comes out if a cow”
Mark,
Why did you submit a standard of identity request?
Clearly, tptb do not want to have anything to do with raw milk especially if that means giving it more credibility via a standard of identity. The nomenclature for milk as far as they are concerned has already been established.
Be thankful you’re not considered a member of their “clique” despite all the hoops you’ve jumped through to meet their so-called, safe milk standards.
Andy Rooney’s indubitable reasoning is irrelevant in the minds of bureaucrats who, it would appear, are in the business of denying and manipulating self-evident truth.
Consider how this famous claim of the self-evidence has been manipulated, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.
Due to legal and conspiracy theory absurdities I will now sign off and shut my computer off for a long while keep up will miss you
OPDC tried to gain SOI approval for 1% and 2% raw milk. In CA only skim and whole are allowed by SOI. Consumers were asking for choices in buffer fat levels many years ago. We were summarily denied. We were also denied SOI for raw chocolate milk even though the regional administrator said that it would be fine. This all happened 12 years ago. We gave up on this process after being summarily denied with out comment. CDFA simply stated that the SOI was denied.
Fairlife gets a CDFA Regulatory Emergency Declaration and a five day comment period cut off to assure no one could make comment.
Let Fairlife have their Ultra Filtered, Protein enhanced, lactose reduced, UHT, ultra adulterated, CAFO Frankin Dead Food SOI. It is just white Coca Cola in the dairy case. It is pretty far fetched to call this fluid concoction ” milk” from a cow. Calling and claiming that this is “better milk”…is pretty much a slap in mother natures face.
Do not get me started….
there’s a good word in German, which ought to be applied every time the swill mis-labelled Fair-Lie-F is mentioned : “ersatz” = artificial
First I read Ron’s book on “The Untold Story of Milk”. Now I’ve bought Dave’s book “The Raw Milk Answer Milk” and am one third thru it. One point that wasn’t brought out in the comment about the recent raw milk outbreak in WI concerning the sicknesses with the football team was that they also consumed chicken that was supposedly undercooked, according to the local papers I’ve read, being from WI. This road was never traveled. I wonder how many other outbreaks contributed to raw milk had unfinished plates? If those plates were cleaned first, would raw milk’s batting average be even higher?
Ted, I did write about the possibly undercooked chicken in my first blog post about the subject. Wisconsin public health officials eventually concluded it wasn’t the chicken, but I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure. In terms of “The Raw Milk Answer Book”, and its coverage of the Wisconsin incident, my main point was that the milk in question wasn’t intended to be served raw, and thus shouldn’t be included in data damaging to raw milk as a food.
http://davidgumpert.com/a-new-act-in-raw-milk-im-morality-play-brought-to-you-by-americas-dairyland
David, thanks for the replies to my posts! Wasn’t a member of this blog then,so I missed the comment on the chicken. Glad to see you on the raw milk side and having read more about your audio version of “The Raw Milk Answer Book”, glad to see you made some use of Wisconsin. You said you did some filming with Mr. Herschberger. Do you have any videos or DVD’s available? I am almost like a lone wolf when I try to promote the benefits of raw milk to family and friends.