A pioneer of food safety innovations has been given a national honour for his work to reduce disease risks within the poultry industry.

Jeremy Hall, technical director at Bernard Matthews, was presented with a Fellowship to the Royal Agricultural Society of England by Baroness Byford during a ceremony at the House of Lords.

Mr Hall, who has worked at the Norfolk company's base in Great Witchingham for 15 years, joined the turkey industry in East Yorkshire after attending Harper Adams and the National Institute Of Poultry Husbandry.

After several years he moved to Marks and Spencer and was based in the Baker Street head office, overseeing raw and cooked poultry lines, and pioneering free-range retail eggs and the first chilled ready meals before moving back into broiler chicken production.

He was made an associate to the Royal Agricultural Society of England in 2008 for completing the Temperton Fellowship on learnings from the 2007 avian influenza outbreak, and the ways the government and industry could improve controls, and develop protection measures. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Food Science and technology, developing a keen interest in poultry meat hygiene and shelf life extensions.

For the last four years, Mr Hall has been working to develop a food safety process that can remove campylobacter food poisoning bacteria from fresh chicken carcasses, aiming to control this health risk to consumers.

The fellowship was awarded for an ongoing contribution to reducing disease risks in poultry production and processing.