The principal - John Oakley
With 40 years experience in the field of food safety and hygiene both in an enforcement role and in the commercial environment he is well placed to offer sound impartial and unprejudiced advice.
A graduate of the University of Aston in Birmingham he worked for several years as an Environmental Health Officer and Authorised Meat Inspector before joining Marks & Spencer in 1971. During 18 years service with that company he was responsible for setting and maintaining hygiene and food safety standards at suppliers factories and during that time at M&S worked in all of the food group departments. From 1982-1989 he worked in the Protein Group and gained a reputation as one of Europes leading authorities on food safety and hygiene in the meat, fish and poultry industries. In his career to date he has inspected and advised in over well over 5000 food factories world-wide.
In addition to having expert knowledge of the European food industry he has worked extensively outside Europe in particular in Argentina, Chile, China, Ecuador, Egypt, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Korea, Malaysia, Middle East, Phillipines, South Africa, Thailand, Uruguay and USA.
He has designed factories and production layouts (mostly in the fish and poultry processing industries) in Kenya, Republic of Ireland, Thailand, Malaysia, and Honduras as well as numerous in UK.
Whilst working for M&S he was one of only two designated trainers responsible for the induction training programme of all new graduate food technologists and was author of several Codes of Practice and quality management systems. He has lectured for the British Veterinary Association on poultry meat hygiene and quality to OVSs engaged on official EU inspection duties in licensed slaughter and cutting plants.
He is a registered centre for the delivery of CIEH food safety courses at Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced level and has organised and conducted numerous seminars on Food Safety & HACCP in Europe, Central America and SE Asia. He is currently involved in carrying out lead auditor training for staff of European Certification Bodies for the purpose of product inspection and authentication under EN 45004 & EN45011. He is engaged as consultant for the British Retail Consortium and as their No 1 approved training provider undertakes training against the complete range of Technical Standards
As a director of Food Quality Management (a Belgium based company) he was responsible for the design and implementation of quality systems based on the concept of Total Quality Management and to a standard allowing accreditation under ISO 9000/1/2.
He is a Fellow and former Chairman of the Society of Food Hygiene Technology, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Health and a member of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. He is included on the UK Law Societys Register of Expert Witnesses.