FRENCH is the language of haute cuisine, and with good reason.
Tablier de sapeur on the menu tempts the palate in ways that a
“slab of tripe” never will. But French has been doing equally
good service down in the basse cuisine as well. Animals in
France, Germany, Belgium and Holland have been reared for years
using something the French call boues d'épuration. Now the
British are clutching their stomachs to discover that this
little delicacy translates, more or less, as “sewage sludge”,
flushed out of abattoirs and rendering-plants and sometimes even
septic tanks. In one of the European Union's angriest internal
trade disputes, many British farmers and others are demanding a
ban on “sewage-fed” French meat for at least as long as France
maintains its ban on British beef (see article).  The precision
of translation here is a matter of critical dispute. If boues
d'épuration were always mere “sewage sludge” as the British (and
the European Commission) understand it, then putting it into
animal feed would be illeg