The West Virginia Conformance with Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards (VNRFRPS) project is designed to advance West Virginia Bureau for Public Health?s (WVBPH) conformance with the VNRFRPS. The WVBPH VNRFRPS project includes updating regulatory requirements, implementing innovative outreach strategies for industry and consumers, and maintaining an environmental health electronic reporting system for food inspections. The program plans to develop a train-the-trainer program to provide food safety training to a school-age audience. WVBPH also intends to meet face- to-face with a person-in-charge at each facility regulated by the agency to discuss control of food safety risk factors. The state?s food protection program will be strengthened by identification of out-of-control risk factors in the retail food setting by the inspectors and facilities, and training in how to implement control measures to reduce the risk of foodborne illness. The project will make the state?s program comparable to retail food programs across the state and nation enrolled in VNRFRPS, resulting in a more integrated food safety system. WVBPH plans share training materials developed as part of this project with other regulatory agencies.
The goals of the West Virginia Conformance with Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards (VNRFRPS) project are to advance and maintain the program?s conformance with VNRFRPS, enhance the program for efficiency, and to contribute to a more integrated food safety system. The objective of the goals is to protect consumers by enabling regulators and industry to identify risk factor violations in retail food establishments and implement control measures, resulting in the prevention of foodborne illness. In addition, maintaining and improving VNRFRPS conformance ensures that food retail food establishments are held to uniform standards by all inspectors, resulting in more consistent, enhanced inspections and safer food products.
