NOT SINCE Upton Sinclair's 1906 book "The Jungle" has the American meat market been this shaken. On Jan. 30, the Humane Society of the United States released undercover video showing employees at a Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. plant abusing and forcing into the slaughterhouse animals that could not stand. The actions contained in this footage constitute a violation of federal animal cruelty laws as well as food safety legislation. Animals that can't stand -- so-called "downer" animals -- cannot be used for human consumption without the approval of an Agriculture Department inspector; the inability to stand can be a symptom of mad-cow disease, and it can also lead to wallowing in pathogen-containing feces.

As a result, the plant voluntarily recalled 143 million pounds of beef, including 50.3 million pounds that had been sent to federal nutrition programs, including those that serve schools. The risk presented by this meat is quite low -- and thankfully so, since most of it has already been consumed. Still, the case raises broader questions about the structure of U.S. food inspections.

Clearly, Westland employees violated the law. The culpability of USDA inspectors in this matter is still unclear. In addition to their regular checks upon animals' arrival at the plant and their post-slaughter inspections, inspectors are supposed to make random visits to pens to verify safe and humane handling. If the abuse and slaughter of unapproved downer animals were as common as the Humane Society says they were, inspectors should have noticed. The USDA says it is investigating.

The actions of these individual inspectors aside, several problems are endemic to the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. One is understaffing, as about 10 percent of inspector positions are vacant (the full-time presence of an inspector is a requirement for every meat plant). Another problem is how inspectors are deployed, since the inspection process is still largely based on a 1907 law that emphasizes quick, postmortem visual checks of beef, even though the greatest risks lie in pathogens invisible to the naked eye. The USDA could benefit from more flexibility in how it uses its resources. Having the authority to issue mandatory recalls and create more standards for pathogen levels also would help. One legislative proposal would combine the 15 federal agencies responsible for regulating different parts of the food supply into a unified Food Safety Administration. For reasons of efficiency and consistency, it's an attractive idea, but more research needs to be done to ensure that such a restructuring wouldn't create another bureaucratic mess (the Department of Homeland Security comes to mind).

More immediately, the USDA needs to better notify consumers about potential health risks. The agency's policy is to not disclose the list of retail stores known to have sold the recalled meat or products that contain it. This has led to great confusion among consumers over whether anything they've purchased or eaten was affected. The USDA should change this policy and answer that age-old question: Where's the beef?