"I'd like to order the steak/ burger, please."

"Ok, and how would like your cow?"

The "usual thing" is context; we already know it's meat. Etymologically, the word 'beef' was absorbed into the English language from the French distinctions between meat on the table versus the live animal ("le bœuf" vs "la vache"). We get the word 'veal' from the same place (veau). Veal cattle are generally the bull calves/ males born to dairy cows that are killed a few weeks to a few months old. Or, those calves can be castrated and raised as steers for beef (beef cattle, which can also include females/ cows) or raised as bullocks/ oxen. Then, you can either buy "a side of beef" or "half a cow". So no, the word beef isn't "there either way."

Humans generally raise variants of Bos taurus and/or Bos indicus as beef, whereas we raise many different types of birds as poultry, and Gallus gallus domesticus is only one despite all of the different breeds of "chicken". Still, we have pullets and cockerals vs hens or roosters, and these are further ordered and labled at stages of broiler or fryer vs roaster vs capon vs stewer. We "usually" just say 'eggs' when we mean 'chicken eggs', but I have friends who I have to verify whether they used duck or goose eggs (both for recipe purposes and because I am apparently a jealous masochist).

Anyway, all of these different words convey meaning. Tuna is both the name of the whole fish as well as the meat, but if someone says "fresh tuna" vs "tuna fish", you know the latter is canned (though is could be solid vs chunk). That's not where "tuna" ends, though. Tuna roe, for example is a specific ingredient distinguished from beluga caviar (another set of specific words and names). Or tuna scraps is distinguished from the meat (especially when making soup). Here in the Southwest specifically, those of us who use prickly pear cactus verbally differentiate the pads/ nopales vs the fruit/ la tuna during both harvest and sale, so when I make a late summer fruit salad, I add tuna fruit. That is admittedly a regional difference, but still valid.