BEIJING — Bruised by international reaction to food safety lapses, the Chinese government announced Wednesday that regulators here have shut down 180 food manufacturers this year after finding such potentially toxic ingredients as formaldehyde in candy, pickles, biscuits and other common fare.
The closures followed a nationwide inspection of some of China's estimated 1 million food processing plants, most of them small and unlicensed, food safety officials said.
The announcement was posted on the government's English-language website and prominently displayed in the main English-language newspaper. It appeared to be aimed at assuaging the fears of foreign consumers that China wasn't carefully watching its food processing industry. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates the industry's 2005 sales at $250 billion.
Although no figures have been released on export losses in the three months since food safety concerns became public, there's evidence that the series of scandals has taken a toll.
"They hurt very much," said Hu Xiaosong, vice president of food science and nutrition at China Agricultural University. "A few bad examples have hurt all Chinese enterprises' reputations."
Moreover, the government suggested that the problems may not be limited to a small number of companies. "These are not isolated cases," Han Yi, head of the government's quality control and inspection department, was quoted as saying.
This latest indication of serious problems in China's food processing industry caused barely a ripple of reaction domestically, presumably because it was not published or broadcast by most major Chinese-language news outlets.
The shutdowns did receive prominent coverage in the China Daily, a state-run English-language publication, suggesting that authorities hoped to mollify foreign consumers by demonstrating the government's commitment to food safety.
Food safety emerged as a major concern in the last three months, beginning with the news that pet food made in China had been contaminated with melamine, a chemical usually used in plastics and pesticides. Since then, there have been several scares involving food or other goods, including tainted toothpaste, stale rice snacks, diseased pork, potentially poisonous fish and other tainted or fake products.
On Wednesday, Japan became the latest country to reject Chinese products when importers began recalling millions of containers of toothpaste that was reported to be contaminated with diethylene glycol, a potentially dangerous chemical used in antifreeze.
