On Sunday, the USDA recalled 143 million pounds of beef—the largest recall ever—after an undercover video on Jan. 30 showed sickly “downer” cows (at a higher risk for E. coli, salmonella and mad cow disease) getting forklifted and electrically prodded so they would pass inspection.

It’s got anti-meat folks in a tizzy and caps off a couple of bad weeks for beef, which has been harangued more than usual lately for its industry’s inhumane practices, for the more than threefold increase in E. coli breakouts last year and for Americans’ general overabundance of it (i.e., part of the obesity epidemic). Of the recalled meat, 37 million pounds were also headed for school lunches, though officials said most of it has probably already been consumed.

Humane Society footage originally exposed the Southern California slaughterhouse. (Like any effort in the vein of PETA’s “Meet Your Meat,” it is graphic.) The YouTube video caused an uproar. Congress has also joined the fray.

All this comes not even a month after the FDA cleared the way for the sale of cloned beef, a practice whose sole beneficiaries, say critics like Verlyn Klinkenborg, are “the nation’s large meatpacking companies—the kind that would like it best if chickens grew in the shape of nuggets.”

Yet mostly silent on the matter, from blogs to pulpits, are conservative Christians, many of whom live in the Midwest or Bible Belt and have closer ties to the industry than environmentalists. (The children’s-health aspect has been different, and many Christians made sure local school cafeteria meat got checked.)

Some point out that anti-corporatism, speciesism and the animal liberation movement are the un-Christian impetus for much of the outrage, and that it drives the few seriously interested Christian groups, like the Christian Vegetarian Association. Although guys like Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons, a book about a mostly Christian counterculture that lives simply and embraces traditional conservatism, talk about man’s role as Earth’s stewards, even his blog commenters think he’s been too silent.

More environmentalists and Eric Schlosser-esque food-industry critics are arguing that Christians should oppose complicity in any kind of cruelty or gluttony. Yet Christians who agree find themselves siding with arguments made by guys like left-leaning environmental journalist Michael Pollan—that, for example, our reliance on cheap, abundant meat depends on a system that perverts animal husbandry into something cruel and immoral—which are made by their theological and ideological opposites. Not eager to be associated with the decades-long linchpin of the environmentalist’s agenda, Christian leaders aren’t gung-ho about joining forces with these folks.

However, with issues formerly considered lefty—HIV/AIDS prevention and global warming—getting more attention from evangelicals and the popularity of so-called Red Letter Christians like Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo rising, it could be coming.