Can you 'taste the difference' between wild salmon and farmed? Sainsbury's clearly can't - and neither can buyers at the Harrods food halls, no less. Both were caught selling farmed fish as wild in an FSA-backed sting last week involving Trading Standards officers around the country. And while I'm sure it wasn't deliberate, they must be hugely embarrassed and worried about the bad PR this has generated. The publicity won't just have impacted on Sainsbury's and Harrods, however. While a number of other retailers were let off the hook, as it were, on the basis of insufficient evidence, the value of wild salmon - and other premium products such as Jersey new potatoes that are also being hit by cheaper imitations - will be hugely undermined if the public loses trust in purveyors of fine, finer and finest food, from supermarkets to farmers' markets and fish shops. So it's in the whole industry's interest to ensure that traceability is tightened and provenance secured. The Food Standards Agency is to be congratulated, therefore, on its work in this area. I had thought this should be the work of Trading Standards, but the FSA has brought the power of its £750m budget to bear to co-ordinate and implement the sting and create the testing procedures. The agency should also be congratulated for calling, so far in advance of next year's review, for dialogue to begin on the possibility of changes to its Nutrient Profiling Model. It was never going to abandon the model earlier than its stated schedule. But by starting the process next month (see p6), it has given everyone the best possible chance of getting it right this time whether by rectifying anomalies or going back to the drawing board with the new research that's emerged since the NPM was first developed.

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