BEIJING — Bruised by international reaction to Chinese food safety lapses, the government announced yesterday that regulators here have shut down 180 food manufacturers so far this year after finding such potentially toxic ingredients as formaldehyde in candy, pickles, biscuits and other common foods.

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 Web site and prominently displayed in the main English-language newspaper. It appeared gauged to assuage the fears of foreign consumers that China isn't carefully watching its food processing industry, which had an estimated value of just under $250 billion in 2005.

Although no figures have been released on export losses in the three months since food safety concerns first became public, the evidence is that a 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 few companies.

"These are not isolated cases," Han Yi, director of the government's quality control and inspection department, was quoted as saying on a government Web site.

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, an official English-language publication, suggesting that authorities hoped to assuage foreign consumers by demonstrating the government's commitment to food safety.

Food safety emerged as a major concern in China in the past 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.

Yesterday, Japan became the latest country to reject Chinese products when importers began recalling millions of containers of toothpaste that were reported to be contaminated with diethylene glycol, a potentially dangerous chemical used in antifreeze.

In what appeared to be retaliation for a U.S. regulatory crackdown on some Chinese products, authorities in Beijing this week singled out more U.S. food processors, which have fallen under closer scrutiny. The government said Tuesday that it had seized shipments of orange pulp and dried apricots from the United States because they contained high levels of bacteria and preservatives.

The apricots were produced by Mariani Packing Co. of Vacaville, Calif. Calls to the company late yesterday afternoon were answered by a security guard who said the plant was closed for the day.

For all the uproar, there are those who insist that China's food standards are not out of line with international standards, and that products made by larger companies — the ones most likely to be exported — generally have a good safety record.

"Most big and mid-sized enterprises are very careful and focus on their reputation," Hu said in an interview. "They can't afford to mess up."

"I personally believe the whole thing is improving," he added. "Statistics show that food security was way worse 15 years ago."

At that time, he said, only about 70 percent of Chinese products met the government's safety standards. Now, he said, research at his university shows that roughly 90 percent of the products meet standards, and the standards themselves are considerably higher.

That still leaves plenty of room for trouble, however.

The results of the nationwide food plant inspections were posted yesterday on the government's Web site, the day after being discussed at a news conference for Chinese journalists.

The government said it had seized 23,000 cases of fake and low-quality food valued at $26 million between last December and May.

Inspectors found traces of dyes, mineral oils, paraffin wax, formaldehyde and malachite green chloride, an anti-fungal agent used in fish farming that is a suspected carcinogen.

The substances had been used in the making of flour, candy, pickles, biscuits, black fungus, melon seeds, bean curd and seafood, said Han, a senior official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

Gu Bo in the Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.