u/guilded_turd559

I am in California and I am about a semester away from finishing my degree in EOHS at a school that allows me to take the REHS exam upon graduation (without the trainee time).

I currently work in R&D for a food manufacturer and have my PCQI and HACCP certs and will have GSP when I graduate.

I have a few questions.

1. Studying for the REHS, it's a pretty hefty amount of information and I want to start early so I'm not cramming for 2 weeks as the exam comes. Does the exam cover anything more than anything else (for instance, should i focus on food law more than chemistry, more than toxicology, more than physics, etc?). I have started using the study guide on the CADPH website as a starting place, but it's massive.

2. The county I live in has both urban and rural mountainous areas where it takes a few hours to cross the county lines. How likely is it theyre going to stick me with all rural areas (I understand this is highly geography specific, but wondering if it's a thing)?

3. While I enjoy environmental and occupation safety, my real interest is in food safety and retail food environments. I understand county level specialists dont make great money starting out (I'll be taking a pay cut from what I am making now). How often (in your experience) do people stay in the public sector? And how easy is it to transition into private sector fsqa and ehs work after a year or two in public?

4. Would taking HAZWOPER, ISO lead auditor, OSHA 30, or any other cert help me in getting a county job and/or a private job?

5. Do you mostly do retail food as a county level specialist or is it wherever they want to put you?

I am still relatively new to the industry. i have 16 years in traditional kitchens and 5 years in R&D for cpg. I currently work in R&D for a snack company that is roughly 100 million in revenue a year.

i am the only r&d person at the company. currently they are wanting to bring products from development to market in 2 months max, and think formulation should be done in a few hours. I have multiple times been asked on a days notice to bring something start to finish in less than a week.

over the last month or so they have wanted 3 4sku lines in our own branded stuff, 4 4sku lines for our sister company, and 22 1-13sku lines for private label customers. The items I am tasked with creating are not like "we make soda, we can change the flavor for you" but all over the board product wise.

In each item i am in charge of formulation/benchtops, costing, procurement, packaging, sample making, mock ups, sales decks, shelf testing (luckily we send these out to a lab), third party certs, specification sheets, haacp additions, nutritional information, reformulation, production pilots, and production first runs.

I make 70k in California in a not one of the 2 major metros.

Is this normal? is the pay normal? i am getting burnt out with the constant changes and priorities being tweaked. I have talked to my boss but nothing is changing. I asked for additional help but apparently there is no room in the budget. Thought my formulas over the last 4 years have brought in a bulk of the revenue, and we're in a bunch of major retailers and club stores, but I'm not privy to the economics after i cost thigns out and send cogs over to finance.