Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet – and that goes double for staged animal rights videos.

Godvine is a website where you can find a plethora of inspiration from Bible verses to inspiring videos of heroism, people overcoming unlikely circumstances and the reuniting of a mama cow and her baby … or something like that.

I was alerted to a video on Godvine, and I immediately watched the production put out by the Gentle Barn, an animal rights activist group from California. The video was of the reuniting of a Polled Hereford-appearing beef cow and her Jersey-appearing bull calf.

Raise any red flags yet?

There was footage of the cow, in good body condition, that had been rescued from a farm the previous night. She was bellowing, like cows do when you wean their calves. But they wanted you to think she was having an emotional breakdown and was in severe pain because her calf was taken from her.

Then, they returned to the “abusive farm” and “rescued” her calf and videoed the reuniting of Karma and her supposed calf, which appeared to be at least six months old. While they narrated the video they said this cow and her baby were separated and how awful it was, and that the cow just wanted her baby back so she could feed it.

They also commented on the fact that she was dripping milk, adding to the horror of the situation – yes, I said horror, because that’s how they made it sound. Of course, the ballad playing in the background added special emotional, tear-jerking emphasis.

When the Jersey bull got off the trailer, the poor, emotionally scarred thing fought the halter and then fell down because it was so stressed and hungry. What the bull really did was the famous “Jersey flop,” as it went down flat out on his side, legs straight out and refused to get up. After a minute, he popped up and trotted to the pen where the bawling mother was making a scene.

They led him into the pen with the Polled Hereford cow and he again was verklempt … because of being stressed and undernourished from being separated from his mom – and guess what? He fought the halter and went down again!

Oh what a tragic sight it was, seeing this overnourished, healthy-as-a-horse Jersey bull play its tricks on the unsuspecting rescue team.

The bull finally got up and began to nurse the cow. And all was right with the world again. Gentle Barn had done their job in reuniting Karma and her baby from the bad, bad farmer who wanted to put normal production practices to work and wean the calf from the Hereford cow so she could be bred again and have another JERSEY bull calf.

This video is a most absurd attempt at making livestock producers look like the bad guy for wanting to raise livestock for human consumption. Any producer would look and laugh.

But the shame of it is, this video appeared on a credible website visited by thousands of people every day, who don’t know how calves are weaned, how beef is produced and or the insanity of vegan animal rights activist groups.

This is what we are up against and we must combat this nonsense with responses that don’t apologize for being producers of food and fiber but, rather, which educate with the simple truth.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.