I thought it was just ok…reminiscent of school cafeteria burgers, and happy to have the condiments to give it a flavor.
Totally agree on the bun!
Probably worth mentioning that the food regulations in the U.S. have their historical roots in the beginning of the last century, when Upton Sinclair published his novel The Jungle. The unsanitary conditions of meat processing at that time weren’t meant to be the focus of the book, but that’s what caught attention.
I hadn’t thought about this book in forever and your post brought it to mind.
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I came across a few articles online about this when I was researching for my book about food in the Great War. The Vestey family had a provisons business in Liverpool - the major UK port receiving imports from the Americas. In the latter half of the 19th century, one of the sons was sent to Chicago where, still in his teens, he established a factory which canned corn beef. During the war period, the company became major suppliers to the British army - tins of corned beef being an important part of the rations.
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Thought you might find this observation interesting, given that you are an author. 
It had slipped my mind that food regulations in the U.S. over the last century can trace their lineage back to Sinclair’s The Jungle, which served to ignite public sentiment though Sinclair had other aims.
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Saw this article today - didn’t feel like it warranted its own thread but figured if you read this thread you might find it interesting.
Talks about the increase in beef recalls due to E. coli in the USA and factors influencing that increase.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ground-beef-recalls-food-poisoning_l_5dc980e6e4b00927b2371a9a
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Going back to John’s original post, I have some observations. These are based on what IS not my or anyone else’s opinion of what should be and therefore, I hope, apolitical.
Sovereign nations have agriculture regulations. When you go through customs and immigration (C&I) you are actually going through at least four things: customs (your stuff), immigration (you), agriculture (protection of agriculture in the country you are entering), and health (protection of public health in the country you are entering); in some places law enforcement is in addition to immigration and there may be additional administrative hurdles. I’ve had as many as six official on board entering some countries by sea.
Agriculture and health are both issues that John raises. It is highly unlikely that the UK or any country would waive regulations in association with a trade agreement, Brexit or not. We went through this some years ago associated with mad cow disease. Regardless of trade agreements beef was stopped at borders due to agriculture and health regulation.
My first personal encounter was a couple of decades ago when lack of understanding and planning on my part led me to present myself at a border with products that were confiscated. Apparently being open and forthright and cooperative helped as there were no fines although there were fees for quarantine, transport, and incineration. Now, better informed, I provision a bit differently but focus on eating fragile foods first and always prioritize what will be an issue at borders. It is not unusual to have a “fire line” passing up veg from galley to deck and tossing it overboard before entering territorial waters. I fully understand the issues, support the regulation, and act accordingly.
Some countries including Australia and New Zealand require documentation of bottom cleaning and even latest application of bottom paint. If the US did so we would not have a zebra mussel problem. Some of our other invasive non-native marine fauna problems arrived in ship ballast tanks.
PLEASE think about this the next time you walk through C&I at an airport with foreign food products thinking the rules are some silly bureaucratic restriction. Smuggling food stuffs is a deadly serious matter.
Long way around, if UK MHRA or Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs don’t find food imports from anywhere, including the US, acceptable they won’t be in your food just as British or other (for now) EU country products (e.g. raw milk cheeses) aren’t available in the US.
In the US inspections are the norm, either of everything or statistically significant random samples. That leads to the question of what the limits are as technology advances and thus documents like that cited. If you wait for consumer complaints the de facto standards are more lax.
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Huffington Post is an advertising company, not credible journalism. My adblocker showed 25 ads on the page you linked.
To my recollection most recent cases of E. coli or salmonella have come from leaf vegetables. That is not to say that there aren’t or can’t be issues from meat (remember Jack In The Box?) but that article is click-bait.
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For anyone that wants to look up the actual recalls on their own . . . .
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Actually, there have a lot of beef recalls this year
Late reply Jr., but I totally agree with your frivolous assessment:
“…they would not pay him the difference in price between the more expensive beef burrito, and the cheaper bean one, he said.”
The above implies to me that he asked for a refund, which further implies that if he had been given a refund that would have been an end to it.
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I don’t know specifically about the nature Huffington post, no comment on its editorial style. But let me remind you that newspapers always need to depend on advertising to survive, especially digital media. Husband works in a news group, with the decline of sales of paper, news website’s income is a disaster. Very few online news sites on earth reach a equilibrium. (OK, this is hors subject and not food related, I will stop there.)
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Editorial style and political positions were not my point. Without selling advertising (they sell a lot!) they would not exist. Every story is jazzed up to draw clicks. In the context of food, it is like unto the difference between Serious Eats that sells both advertising and “product placement” (like TV shows being paid to make products visible from Chevrolet to Pepsi to DSW) and Hungry Onion.
Hungry Onion is not a commercial forum, the owner pays all the expenses, the maintenance, so you are actually in his house guests. 
Moderators are all non paid volunteers. I have no idea of the financial situation.
Earlier, the question of insertion of advertising banners was raised here (as in other discourse food sites), HO decides to remain ad free.
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I agree entirely.
Unless you have government sponsored news outlets, funded by taxation (as we partially have in the UK), you simply do not get news media, whether print, digital or television, without advertising. As in any capitalist society, they all exist to make profit for their shareholders. The important thing is to know who they are beholden to and to take account of that with their journalism.
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Right. The money has to come from somewhere. I personally consider Huffington Post to be yellow journalism, which is not to be confused with the political spectrum between NYT/WaPo and Fox News.
The apolitical perspective with regard to food is between talking about the science of the impact of GMO and the anti-intellectual screeching (<- clearly there is judgment on my part here) of the Food Babe.
I don’t care what Food Babe thinks of what I eat and I don’t care what Huffington Post thinks of what I eat. Science, preferably with footnotes and peer review, is important.
I apologize for ranting.
Which was exactly my point.
My Grandfather was a Doughboy and my Father a top turret gunner/flight engineer on a B24 flying out of England and bombing Germany in 1944-45.
I have a map of his that he wrote the targets, dates and type of target such as rail yards and the Hermann Goering Works. All the dates match the 8th AF historical accounts that include aircraft type, casualties and lost planes.
I have no idea what they ate.
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Better than the soldiers of the other combatant nations, in terms of daily calorie intake. Food, though, will have generally been similar to the armies - stews when not in the front line, canned meat rations when they were.
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I had been eating carnitas tacos every Tuesday at a place across the street from where I work. One day saw some type of bag closure in my food, and have not been back in years. My colleague seemed amused that I couldn’t eat there when I knew of this particular foreign body, but all the KNOWN “foreign” bodies ( tongues, ears, tails) didn’t bother me at all.
ETA…I probably should have read the prior posts. 
