In the wake of the latest recall of meat for possible contamination, there is the fingering of the usual suspects. A federal lawmaker wants to strip the U.S. Department of Agriculture of its responsibility for inspecting meat, saying that the agency's twin mandates of food safety and industry promotion are contradictory. A consumer group accused the USDA of not having enough inspectors. A candidate talks about increasing the budget for the USDA inspection service. No one is talking about the issue in other than ordinary terms.

This most recent recall of a record 143 million pounds of beef covers goods produced over the last two years by a plant in Chino, Calif., and the reason for the recall was a hidden camera which recorded meat plant workers improperly handling debilitated cattle which should have been checked by a veterinarian before being sent to slaughter. When The Journal Times reported on a Wisconsin meat recall in October, it found overlapping responsibility for inspections, with state inspectors looking at products for in-state consumption and federal inspectors involved if products cross state borders. Food safety experts also said that the United States has surprisingly few problems given the size and complexity of its food supply system, and numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control show that the incidence of contaminated beef fell substantially a couple of years ago although it did creep back up a bit.

In the absence of consumer acceptance of a process such as irradiation of meat, what we need is some new thinking. Government inspections will always be limited by budgets. Automakers like Toyota can stress quality systems, but consumers can easily identify Toyotas by brand. The problem with ground beef is that one pound looks like any another, and there is more money to be made by cutting corners in processing. The answer may lie in the organics industry.

By adhering to a federal standard organic farmers have created premium-priced products in an industry in which one vegetable looks like another, and farmers found that people are willing to pay more for what they perceive to be better and healthier food. Meat processors could adopt a similar strategy, charging more for meat which is, for example, processed to a higher standard verified by, for example, the Humane Society of the United States which made that hidden camera video at the California meat processor. There is already an inspection system for meat and other products, of course; you've seen the little USDA-approved labels. This organic-farming like system would be beyond that, a more rigorous set of standards for producers to meet.

It would behoove governments both state and federal, and the meat-processing industry, to validate some higher standard or process because inspections will never be enough. Given the real limits of taxation, the public will never pay for full-time inspectors at every point along every processing line in every plant. And even then the inspectors are likely to miss something at some time. The food safety experts who talked about the Wisconsin recall said that although there is more testing in the industry, in part to defend against lawsuits, sometimes the process just fails and contamination passes through.

The rush by companies to look environmentally conscious has created new products and new profits to serve a social goal which otherwise doesn't appear on balance sheets. We cannot force meat processing executives to dine on hamburgers made from each day's batch of product, but we could try to enlist the profit motive to encourage more care.