NIFAC committee members

Dr Campbell is the Board member for Northern Ireland and Chair of the Northern Ireland Food Advisory Committee. She previously held the position of the Electoral Commission’s Commissioner with responsibility for Northern Ireland. She was Chief Medical Officer in the Northern Ireland Department of Health & Social Services for 11 years. She is a board member of the All Ireland Cancer Foundation, Oxfam Ireland, Threshold, and a member of the Prison Service Pay Review Body. She is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine and of the Royal College of Physicians, London, and was given an honorary doctorate by Queen's University, Belfast.

Dorothy Black graduated with a teaching degree form Liverpool University, has a Masters in Education from QUB and currently lecturers in the School of Education, University of Ulster and is Course Director of the Post Graduate Certificate in Education for Home Economics. Other duties include co-ordinating and delivering continuing professional development Masters’ courses for teachers.

In 2002 she was appointed as a council member of the Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum and Assessment, (CCEA) and has been engaged in review, development and implementation of the revised NI curriculum designed to meet the changing needs of Northern Ireland society and its young people. She has sat on a number of subject and qualification working groups with responsibility for developing examination specifications and programmes for teaching food and consumer issues in the curriculum.

She is a member of the General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland which ensures that professional standards of teacher competency are maintained. From 2003-2005 she was chairperson of the Association of Teachers of Home Economics (ATHE) and continues to edit the association’s quarterly newsletter for Home Economics teachers. She is also a member of the International Federation for Home Economists and has presented papers at its conferences.

Research interests include investigating how adolescents perceive food risk and working with primary schools in Northern and Southern Ireland to develop a food education and assessment process.

Other interests include promoting community relations with post primary schools, through prejudice reduction and conflict resolution workshops and developing transatlantic links with schools and churches in Delaware USA.

David Mark is a Food technologist. His early career was in the Dairy Industry and after spending time in the catering sector as a McDonalds Restaurant franchisee he moved back to the Food Processing industry initially within the Egg Products sector and subsequently with the O'Kane Poultry Group - Ballymena involved with primary and further chicken and turkey processing, working in close contact with most of the major UK retail multiples. Currently he is Commercial Director of Countryside Services Ltd, a subsidiary of the Ulster Farmers Union, a business centred on providing commercial services to farmers, primary producers and the agri-food sector.

Dr Brian Smyth was Director and Consultant Epidemiologist of the Health Protection Agency Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre in Northern Ireland from 1999 to 2009. For 20 years he has authored a monthly health protection epidemiological bulletin describing local trends. Being a part of that organisation has enabled him to gain an insight into the national interface between the HPA, Defra and the FSA.

He is currently employed as a consultant in health protection by the Public Health Agency.

Mr David Lindsay has 25 years’ experience within the food industry and related sectors, both private and public. In industry, he has worked in the Meat, Dairy, Brewing and Bakery sectors with employments in England, Northern Ireland and the republic of Ireland. Mr Lindsay is currently employed by the Northern Ireland Fishery Harbour Authority.

Michael Walker lives in Newtownabbey. His academic background is in chemistry and the analysis of food, drugs and water. He is a self-employed consultant on food, drugs, air pollution and water issues with attendant civil and criminal litigation, a board member of Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (a DARD non-departmental public body), and external examiner for Dublin Institute of Technology's BSc in Forensic and Environmental Science.

Mr Walker served as Public Analyst in Northern Ireland (1986-2004) and as Chief Executive of Forensic Science Northern Ireland between 2004 and 2006. He is a former board member of the Consumer Council, the Food Standards Agency, and the Food Safety Promotion Board. He was chair of the Food Standards Agency's NI Advisory Committee, 2000- 2004. His personal interests are hillwalking, climbing, food and wine.

Alan graduated from Queens University Belfast with a degree in Food Science. He spent nearly 20 years of his career with Pritchitt Foods of Newtownards, rising to the position of Group Operations & Technical Director. Following a restructuring of the family owned company he moved to England in 1998 to take up the post of Technical Director with Stella Products based in Liverpool. In this role he led the development of many well known brands in the frozen confectionery range.
Alan moved to the Longslow Food Group in 2003 as Operations Director with responsibility for several production sites throughout the UK, primarily in Dairy and Meat processing. In 2004 he assumed the Joint Managing Director position with Longslow.

Alan returned to Northern Ireland in 2004 to get married and take up the post of Chief Executive at W.D.Irwins of Portadown, Northern Irelands largest independent Bakery. He took redundancy from Irwin’s in 2006 to facilitate an internal Family owner restructuring.
His present interests include Rugby, golf, soccer, food and wine.

David McCleery holds the position of Chief Specialist Microbiologist with safefood. In this role he provides scientific and technical advice to safefood and relevant partners, plays a key role in developing safefood’s research portfolio and building scientific cooperative mechanisms, in relation to microbiology, on the island of Ireland.

Originally From Dundonald, Co Down, David was educated at Queen’s University Belfast and holds a BSc in Food Science, a PhD in Food Microbiology, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication. He joined safefood from a joint appointment with the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Northern Ireland and Queen’s University Belfast, where he was a Project Leader in Food Microbiology and a Lecturer in the Department of Food Science. He has also worked as a Research Fellow in the Department of Veterinary Science at Queen’s, and held the positions of Lecturer in Communication and Food Technologist for the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise at Loughry Campus. David sits on the Approvals Board of EIQA Hygiene Mark.

In his spare time, David is a keen gardener and enjoys performing choral music