Connections to food and pet companies may warrant further investigation

U.S. Marshals seized millions of dollars worth of ingredients on May 7 2009 from American Mercantile Corporation, based in Memphis Tennessee. During an inspection of the company in March, FDA investigators discovered evidence of extensive rodent and insect infestation throughout the company's warehouse, which the company failed to correct.

American Mercantile stores and processes food ingredients, which are sold or used in the dietary supplements, food, tea and pet food manufacturing industries. The seized articles include food products such as sarsaparilla, spearmint leaves, cornstarch, sweet orange peels powder, licorice powder, sassafras, and salt.

American Mercantile Corp. declined comment. Damon Arney is the president of the company on record, according to organic certification and FDA documents.

FDA claims there are no reports of illness associated with consumption of the products containing American Mercantile sourced ingredients. Further investigation by Functional Ingredients magazine revealed that Damon Arney is president and owner of Ingredients Corporation of America (ICA), a food manufacturing facility, and he own Herbs for Horses, an equine and pet products company. As such, Functional Ingredients contacted the FDA field office in Memphis to inquire if the investigation will expand to human and pet foods but they were closed at the time of publication.

ICA, a specialty soup mix and spice company, is a Memphis-based wholly-owned subsidiary of American Mercantile Corp. According the company web site, Ingredient Corp. distributes to 80 countries and sells the Barzi Brand products, which are available online and in supermarkets, including Kroger Delta region, Kehe Food Distributing in the Midwest, Gourmet Award in the Southeast, DPI Distributing, Haddon House Foods in the East, Value Merchandisers, Millbrook Distributing and Giannini Foods in the Mid-South.

Since 2000, Ingredients Corporation began phasing out their bulk spice business and remade itself into a custom blend spice company with the assistance of parent company American Mercantile. Robert Burgess, then president and chief operating officer told the Memphis Business Journal in 2000, "Since American Mercantile was already importing other plant products from exotic locations, it was a natural step to add cultivated spices to the product mix." Since then the company purchased the Barzi brand of dried soup mixes and ramped up a private label spice company under the Memphi brand.