A yahoo on Yahoo is insisting ground beef and minced beef are different things. I can see his point; but in England, what we (USians) call ‘ground beef’ is called ‘minced beef’ there. So UK Dopers: Do you see a difference between ‘minced beef’ (or ‘mince’) and ‘ground beef’?
Not a UK doper, but I think I can start the discussion. Yes, they are different. My Scottish Grandmother made mincemeat pies. I, as a kid, thought they were kind of gross, since they also contained currants or some kind of weird dried fruit.
Mincemeat is literally minced with a knife, whereas ground beef is ground up in a meat grinder. They are both lesser cuts of beef, but the processing with a knife vs. a grinder produces different textures.
I am not a UK doper, but I’ve been in the grocery business and worked for a couple of global firms that are big in the UK. The two products are identical in terms of processing and almost identical in terms of ingredients
There is a British product called mincemeat, which is chopped fruit, not meat at all. But “minced beef” or just “mince” is the same thing as what Americans buy as “ground beef”.
The “minced beef” you’d buy in a Tesco, Morrisons or Sainsburys supermarket in the UK is NOT chopped by hand. It’s ground in a machine just like the stuff you’d buy in Kroger or Publix.
Heck the machine might even be the same if it’s ground in-store. Because the machine manufacturers are global in scope.
What your grandmother made was a pie with fruit mince. It is a traditional filling for little Christmas pies or tarts. Once upon a time it had meat in it but not for a long, long time. These are from Scotland. I had a few over Christmas.
Maybe so, and it might have changed over time, but this Aussie site backs me up:
I once had legacy mince pie at a medieval feast. I believe it was made with venison, a variety of stone fruits, and lots of ground spices.
I was belching sulfur fumes for the next three days! 
That is not right at all. Ground beef does not “melt into sauces”, and if it has soy or other additives in the US, someone is lying.
Ground beef can have added (beef) fat, but cannot legally be more than 30% fat, and no binders, etc. are allowed. And the supermarket usually says what percent fat it is. I haven’t seen anything with more than 20% fat in years.
The question in the OP was about England vs US. The info I supplied is about the stuff you’d buy in supermarkets in those two places. They are substantially identical both in ingredients and processing. In both countries, you can find specialty butchers who will provide knife-chopped mince, but that’s not what you’re buying in the package at the supermarket, not even at Whole Foods or Waitrose.
I don’t know the bona fides of “AussieMeat.hk” but they appear to be a specialty supplier of Australian meat in Hong Kong. A lot of what I read on that page looks like commercial puffery with a bit of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) thrown in for good measure.
I lived in the UK for a few months and have bought mince from the Tesco. So far as I could tell, it’s exactly the same as ground beef.
I mean, look at this package. It looks just like American 95:5 sirloin:
They’re the same, and only hipster foodies ( and businesses looking to fleece them) would say different.
Every time I’ve ever used a British recipe that called for “beef mince” I’ve just used regular ground beef from the store. If I’m doing it wrong it hasn’t made itself apparent in any way.
It’s obvious from the texture that that “Lean Beef Steak Mince” was processed by a grinder, not by a knife.
Former US and current UK doper here. Minced beef and ground beef are the same thing. EXCEPT Sainsbury’s is now vacuum packaging their mince which messes up the texture somehow. It’s supposed to use less plastic than the traditional plastic tray and film packaging.
The Aussie site - which is actually a Hong Kong site - is bogus. At least for the US, I have no idea what’s allowed in Hong Kong.
Ground beef (or ground lamb, or turkey, or chicken, or bison, or venison, or…) is 100% the stated meat on the label (unless labeled otherwise). The proportion of lean meat to fat is stated on the label, but that does not inherently mean fat is added (though for some lower grades it might be - but fat is part of meat/muscle and anyone who says otherwise is lacking knowledge of anatomy).
I agree with
According to a long-ago friend who was Scottish, and a chef, and a friend, “minced beef” and “ground beef” are the same thing. He did a bang-up “minced beef and Guiness” this time of year. It was delicious, and based on what we in North America call, “ground beef.”
“Mince pies” and “mince tarts” are entirely different things. Typically served around Christmas, they are fruit-based, and served with hard sauce. No beef of any kind involved.
Part of the confusion from this side (UK) is that the term ‘grinder’ implies something different from a meat mincer. When I hear the term ‘ground beef’, I (incorrectly, I’m sure) instinctively think of something that is processed by grinding between two surfaces such as the way wheat is ground to make flour.
I realise this is incorrect, but it’s not just the term ‘ground’ that is part of the issue, it’s also the name of the machine used to make the stuff; that machine (typically using a feed screw to push product through holes in a plate faced with a rotating cutter (manual version depicted below) is a ‘mincer’ in UK terminology, not a ‘grinder’.
Not quite correct - a lot of sweet mincemeat still contains beef suet. Historically (as mentioned by someone upthread), mince pies did contain actual minced meat.
My grandma made mincemeat pies that had ground beef along with the fruits and nuts and spices and what not. It was extremely sweet and you couldn’t really taste the meat at all.
I made some recently based loosely on a 400 year old recipe (Minst Pyes of an Indifferent biggnesse) - that recipe uses mutton and veal - I just used minced lamb. It was surprising how difficult it was to discern the presence of the meat in the filling (even though it was maybe 40% meat by weight)