RIA International Sued For Allegedly Misrepresenting Raw Material

TEMPE, Ariz.--American Supplement Technologies (AST) and its sister company BNG Enterprises have commenced litigation against raw materials supplier RIA International for allegedly misrepresenting the hypericin content of its St. John's wort.

According to AST's complaint, RIA sold AST 400 kg of St. John's wort and provided a certificate of analysis that the material contained between 0.3% and 0.5% hypericin. AST and BNG relied on RIA's C of A, rather than doing additional testing; the companies found that the product tested with no hypericin when they were contacted by a television station that had done blind testing of products. AST's president, Brad Grossman, stated that "RIA has suggested that AST should have known that the C of A was unreliable" and that RIA was either negligant or intentionally falsified the C of A for hypericin content.

When contacted regarding the complaint, Nirmal Jhunjhunwala, president of RIA, said the company's paperwork all states that the St. John's wort ordered and delivered was a 4:1 ratio extract, not a extract standardized for hypericin content. "If it didn't meet their specifications, they should have returned it," he said. "We gave them what was ordered and they sold it as standardized 0.3 hypericin content."