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Beef is the culinary name for meat from bovines, especially cattle. Beef can be harvested from bulls, heifers or steers. Its acceptability as a food source varies in different parts of the world. Beef muscle meat can be cut into roasts, short ribs or steak (filet mignon, sirloin steak, rump steak, rib steak, rib eye steak, hanger steak, etc.). Some cuts are processed (corned beef or beef jerky), and trimmings, usually mixed with meat from older, leaner cattle, are ground, minced or used in sausages. The blood is used in some varieties of blood sausage. Other parts that are eaten include the oxtail, liver, tongue, tripe from the reticulum or rumen, glands (particularly the pancreas and thymus, referred to as sweetbread), the heart, the brain (although forbidden where there is a danger of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE), the kidneys, and the tender testicles of the bull (known in the United States as ''calf fries'', ''prairie oysters'', or ''Rocky Mountain oysters''). Some intestines are cooked and eaten as-is, but are more often cleaned and used as natural sausage casings. The bones are used for making beef stock. Beef from steers and heifers is very similar. "According to the most recent National Beef Quality Audit, heifer carcasses had slightly more marbling than steer carcasses, but USDA quality grade was not significantly different."〔http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/do_steers_or_heifers_produce_better_beef Jeannine Schweihofer, Michigan State University Extension, and Dan Buskirk, Michigan State University Department of Animal Science.〕 Depending on economics, the number of heifers kept for breeding varies. The meat from older bulls is usually tougher, so it is frequently used for mince (UK)/ground beef (US). Cattle raised for beef may be allowed to roam free on grasslands, or may be confined at some stage in pens as part of a large feeding operation called a feedlot (or concentrated animal feeding operation), where they are usually fed a ration of grain, protein, roughage and a vitamin/mineral preblend. Beef is the third most widely consumed meat in the world, accounting for about 25% of meat production worldwide, after pork and poultry at 38% and 30% respectively.〔Raloff, Janet. (Food for Thought: Global Food Trends ). Science News Online. 31 May 2003.〕 In absolute numbers, the United States, Brazil, and the People's Republic of China are the world's three largest consumers of beef. But Uruguay is in definite lead with the highest beef and veal consumption per capita, followed by Argentina and Brazil. According to the data from OECD, averagely each Uruguayan people ate over 42 kg beef or veal in 2014, representing the highest beef veal consumption per capita in the world. In comparison, each American people only ate nearly 24 kg beef or veal in the same year, while African countries such as Mozambique, Ghana and Nigeria consumed the least beef or veal per capita. The world's largest exporters of beef are Brazil, India, Australia and the United States in that order (in 2014).〔(Beef and Veal Meat Exports by Country in 1000 MT CWE ). 25 March 2013〕 Beef production is also important to the economies of Uruguay, Canada, Paraguay, Mexico, Argentina, Belarus and Nicaragua. == Etymology == The word ''beef'' is from the Latin ''bōs'', in contrast to cow ''sacred'' "Holy" animal for worship which is from Middle English "cou" (both words have the same Indo-European root ). After the Norman Conquest, the French-speaking nobles who ruled England naturally used French words to refer to the meats they were served. Thus various Anglo-Saxon words were used for the animal (such as ''nēat'', or ''cu'' for adult females) by the peasants, but the meat was called ''boef'' (ox) (Modern French ''bœuf'') by the French nobles —who did not often deal with the live animal— when it was served to them. This is one example of the common English dichotomy between the words for animals (with largely Germanic origins) and their meat (with Romanic origins) that is also found in such English word-pairs as pig/pork, deer/venison, sheep/mutton and chicken/poultry.〔''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000: beef.〕 ''Beef'' is cognate with ''bovine'' through the Late Latin ''bovīnus''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「beef」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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