An Oakmont company that attracted federal scrutiny last week for stocking a banned dietary supplement says it was going to ship the supply to a customer in Poland, where the product is legal.

Federal marshals on Wednesday seized $13,500 worth of supplements at ATF Fitness Products Inc. that either contained the banned weight-loss aid ephedra or were mislabeled.

The Food and Drug Administration ruled in February 2004 that supplements containing ephedrine alkaloids were dangerous and prohibited their sale as of April 12.

Chuck Bedoloto, national sales manager for ATF Fitness, said his company was going to sell the supplements to a customer in Poland, where the products aren't banned. The company had ephedra on hand because it couldn't get all its ephedra supplements out the door last spring before the ban took effect.

"We were just trying to get rid of the product that we had left over to foreign accounts," Bedoloto said. "I had a purchase order for the product and payment. I showed [FDA] it was going to Poland, and they asked me to hold on to it."

The products in Oakmont have been seized in place, meaning the pallet of supplements remains at the company under a seal by the U.S. Marshal. Marshals took the action after the U.S. attorney's office filed a forfeiture complaint against the Oakmont company at the request of FDA.

ATF Fitness Products has a limited period of time in which it can contest the forfeiture. Bedoloto said the company was considering its options.

FDA visited ATF Fitness in October for an unrelated matter and stumbled upon the ephedra, Bedoloto said.

Tests performed by the agency showed that some of the supplements did not, in fact, contain ephedrine alkaloids, which led federal officials to call them mislabeled.

Bedoloto was at a loss to explain that finding, saying he had not seen FDA's lab reports. But he said the ephedrine alkaloids were not manufactured by ATF Fitness.

"That product was all made by another manufacturer," Bedoloto said. "We put a label on it, and then we sold it."

Dietary supplements are regulated as a food product, said Michael McGuffin, president of the American Herbal Products Association, and the federal Food and Cosmetic Act does not prohibit export of food that is not eligible for sale in the United States.

According to the law, a food intended for export is not be considered adulterated or misbranded if it meets the specifications of the foreign purchaser, satisfies the export laws of that country and is labeled on the outside of the shipping packages as intended for export.

McGuffin said he could not comment directly on ATF Fitness' situation because he didn't know how the shipping package was labeled.

But the charge that the supplements lacked ephedra when the label said otherwise could be a tough one for the company to explain, McGuffin said.

"I don't think there's a country that has a law that says you can label [the product] any way you want when the ingredient isn't there," he said.