Spiral Foods Proprietary Limited is pulled to the court room for distributing soy milk products that allegedly caused people to suffer from thyroid problems.

Lawyer Bernard Murphy of Maurice Blackburn insists Spiral Foods added a seaweed extract to its soy milk brand, Bonsoy, from 2003 until the product's recall in December 2009. The additive has increased the milk product's iodine content seven times above the safe level.

Murphy pointed out that during the six-year period “scores of people suffered serious health consequences as a result of their consumption of Bonsoy milk... Our clients are health conscious people. They drank this milk to improve their health but instead they became sick, some of them critically ill.”

Twenty nine year old mother Erin Downie led 25 other consumer victims against the Victorian-based distributor of the soy milk. Downie, a Melbourne resident and mother, took two-and-a-half years of trying to find the cause of her thyroid hormone levels going up 10 times above normal.

Australian government tests show one-eight of a cup of Bonsoy exceeds the daily safe limits of iodine.

The chairman of law firm Maurice Blackburn expects more consumers to join the class suit. Murphy said, “This was an easily avoidable disaster... It could have been avoided by a simple test and it was easily foreseeable.”