China still faces significant food safety challenges, health officials said Friday, shortly after Beijing announced it had banned 18 food products as part of the country's aggressive campaign to calm concerns over the safety of Chinese exports.

Friday's banned products included preserved fruits, candied garlic, grilled crab, peanuts and a fruit drink.

China's food and drug safety record has come under scrutiny in recent months, with products including pet food, tires, toy trains and toothpaste being withdrawn from the marketplace because of health and safety concerns.

According to Health Canada, more than 400 products manufactured in China have been recalled from the Canadian marketplace since 2005.

Chinese authorities have recently launched an aggressive campaign of new regulations and crackdowns to protect its export industry, including banning the use of antifreeze ingredient diethylene glycol in toothpaste in July.

"After many years of joint efforts, China has enhanced its food safety levels by a large margin. Food safety qualification rates are continuously increasing," said China's health ministry spokesman, Mao Qun'an."But there is still a big gap between the current food safety situation and the requirements of consumers."

He cited "severe challenges" to food safety, including contamination from sources such as bacteria and concerns arising from new ingredients, fake food products and illegal ingredients that can cause harm.

Mao said the ministry has established a daily supervision and examination system targeting small food producers and is monitoring 61 chemical contaminants in 54 types of food, including Sudan red dye and formaldehyde, a preservative and an embalming fluid that has been linked to cancer in humans.

The health ministry dealt with 111,226 cases of illegal food production in 2006 while inspecting products, he said. During that period, 29,571 businesses were shut down and 1,700 tons of goods were destroyed.    

Foreign media making issue 'bigger than it is'

Also on Friday, Mao lashed out at foreign media, accusing them of exaggerating the country's recent health and safety problems.

"The question of food safety is a problem the whole world faces," Mao said. "Foreign media are using irrelevant cases or just a few cases to make the safety issue much bigger than it is and have linked this to the success of hosting the Olympics" next summer in Beijing.

With files from the Associated Press