EPA personnel may, upon their own initiative or upon request of any interested person or party, meet or communicate with persons or parties outside of government concerning a Registration Standard under development. Such meetings or communications will conform to the following policies and procedures:

(a) Purpose. Meetings and communications may be for the purpose of receiving and considering information, exchanging views, exploring factual and substantive positions, discussing regulatory options or for any other purpose deemed appropriate by the Agency in its deliberations concerning development of a Registration Standard. The Agency will not commit to take any particular action concerning a Registration Standard under development during discussions with any person or party outside of government. The Agency will make its final administrative decision on a wholly independent basis, and in accordance with law.

(b) Meetings with persons or parties outside of government. Requests by responsible persons or parties outside of government to meet with Agency personnel concerning a Registration Standard under development should be directed in writing to the Registration Division. Reasonable requests will ordinarily be granted on a timely basis. EPA will decide the time and place of such meetings, and the Agency personnel who will attend. EPA may decline to meet with persons or parties who assert unreasonable claims of confidential business information for the purpose of circumventing the docketing procedures in §155.32. EPA may also decline to meet if the number or frequency of meetings would delay unduly the issuance of the Registration Standard. Further, no person or party outside government will be accorded special or preferential access to Agency pesticide decisionmaking or to the Agency's decisional process.

(c) Information submitted to the Agency concerning a Registration Standard under development.

(1) Information, comments, data, or other written material submitted to the Agency at any time concerning a Registration Standard under development may be claimed by the submitter to be confidential business information. The burden of identifying claimed confidential business information rests with the submitter, or, in meetings, with the participants from outside of government who wish to assert a claim of confidentiality.

(2) To assert a claim of confidentiality for all or any part of a written submission concerning a Registration Standard under development, the submitter must furnish three copies of the material. Two copies must be complete, with claimed confidential business information clearly marked in the text. Items in the document that are claimed confidential should be numbered consecutively throughout the document. The third copy must have the claimed confidential business information excised from the text without closing up or paraphrasing the remaining text. The deletions should be consecutively numbered to correspond to the numbering of the complete copies. Each copy must be marked on the cover as to whether it contains claimed confidential business information.

(3) Any written material received by the Agency that is not marked as confidential will be deemed to be nonconfidential, and may be made available through the public docket or otherwise disclosed without prior notice to the submitter.

(d) Memorandum of meeting. For each meeting with a person or party outside of government, the Agency will prepare, based on notes taken at the meeting, a memorandum of the meeting. The memorandum will be prepared within 10 working days of the meeting and will include all of the following information:

(1) The date and time of the meeting.

(2) The name of the person who requested the meeting.

(3) The names and affiliations of the participants.

(4) The subject matter of the meeting.

(5) A full and accurate description of all significant positions taken, facts presented, and arguments made by each participant (except that any discussion of claimed confidential business information will be identified in meeting notes, and referenced in the memorandum).

(6) Identification of all documents, proposals, or other materials (other than information claimed to be confidential business information) distributed or exchanged at the meeting.

(7) The name of the person who prepared the memorandum.

[50 FR 49001, Nov. 27, 1985, as amended at 58 FR 34203, June 23, 1993]