Ground meat is meat finely chopped by a meat grinder or a chopping knife. It is called minced meat or more usually mince outside North America.
A common type of ground meat is ground beef, but many other meats are prepared ground in a similar fashion, including pork, lamb, and poultry. In South Asia both lamb (mutton) and goat meat are also minced to produce keema, though the process of mincing is manual. Turkey burgers are relatively popular in the US, especially among dieters.
Ground beef and other ground meats have food safety concerns not associated with whole cuts of meat. If undercooked, it can lead to sickness and food poisoning. In a whole cut from an animal, the interior of the meat is essentially sterile, even before cooking; any bacterial contamination is on the outer surface of the meat. When meat is ground, bacterial contamination from the surface can be distributed throughout the meat. If ground beef is not well cooked all the way to the center, there is a significant chance that enough pathogenic bacteria will survive to cause illness.[1][2] Undercooked Jack in the Box hamburgers contaminated in this manner were responsible for four deaths and the illness of hundreds of people in 1993.[3]
Due to these concerns, some ground beef is now irradiated.