I know where beef comes from. The town where I grew up, St. Joseph, Mo., once had three major meatpacking operations - Swift, Armour and Dugdale. When I was a kid, my Cub Scout pack toured these plants, watching suspended cattle carcasses swing from chains. As a teenager, I tried but failed to get a summer job "in the yards" running livestock from the pens into the slaughterhouses.

But even with my cow-town past, I had a hard time watching the footage of the downer cattle at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. in California. The undercover video prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture this week to announce the biggest recall of beef, 143 million pounds, in American history.

The video has spurred interest in vegetarianism. Recently, the Vegetarian Resource Group, a national organization based in Baltimore, has experienced a spike in calls and e-mails from potential members.

"People describe themselves as being 'mostly vegetarian,' but say that after seeing the video they want to become full vegetarians," John Cunningham, director of consumer research for the group that claims 25,000 members, told me.

Surreptitiously shot at the meat plant and posted on the Web site of the Humane Society of the United States (hsus.org), the video shows workers using cruel methods to try to get fallen dairy cattle to stand before being led to slaughter. The animals were prodded with the tongs of a forklift, smacked in the face with sticks and, in effect, "water-boarded," all in an attempt to get them upright. A cow that is standing passes inspection and is worth more money than one that can not walk.

Two workers at the plant have been fired. Operations at the plant have been suspended. Meat from the plant, which went to school-lunch programs in 35 states, has been put on hold.

Although a downed cow can be a sick animal and can be covered with manure - which if not removed could contaminate the meat - USDA officials say there is no evidence that tainted meat made its way to market. I want to believe these officials, but their track record has not been exactly stellar. Federal inspectors were said to be checking that meatpacking plant twice a day.

Somehow, these downer cattle were abused and sent to slaughter at an inspected plant. Either the inspectors were complicit in this undertaking, or, as I suspect, they were overwhelmed with work.

Any way you explain the situation, the fact is that it took an undercover video by the Humane Society to expose practices that a government inspection program is supposed to catch. It makes you wonder, who is minding the stockyards?

Already there are calls for the meat-inspection system to be more proactive, and to follow a rigorous system of checks before the product is put on the market, not after there is trouble. This is an issue Congress can run with.

The video of the downed cattle, posted on the Web and aired to the nation this week on the Today show, is likely to recharge the debate over how we treat our animals.

Those of us who eat meat contend that there is a proper, humane way to harvest animals. The behavior shown on the video, we would say, is an aberration, something beyond the bounds.

Longtime vegetarians are, Cunningham said, "somewhat bemused" by the reaction of surprise to the video. "As a friend of mine said, 'What did people think happened at a slaughterhouse? Did they think the animals got tickled to death?' "

Dr. Dick Raymond, USDA undersecretary for food safety, told the Associated Press that "we don't think there is a health hazard" posed by these particular downer cattle.

Still, the effect of this video will, I think, be felt at the grocery store, at least in the short run. For the next few days, until the beef recall is complete, I will probably steer clear of the meat aisle. I behaved the same way in 2006 when there were questions about the safety of spinach. It was off the menu for a while.

Similarly, when there were warnings about high mercury levels in swordfish, I stayed away from that.

Eventually, I came back to these foods. We live in a complicated world and, overall, I trust our food supply.

Yet, there is no denying the power of this video. Those images of downed, suffering cattle are hard to shake. I am betting they will shake up the way meat is inspected and the way we take animals to market.

rob.kasper@baltsun.com