Safety concerns in Europe about Chinese goods are not a politically motivated effort to protect its market, the European Union trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, said Monday.

"The allegation that European companies’ action against toxic Chinese goods is politically motivated and shows bias against China is totally false," Mandelson said. "This is not a question of trade, but of health."

The EU trade chief was responding to a Chinese official’s claims, made on China Central Television’s economic channel on Sunday, that concerns over the safety of Chinese products were protectionist - an attempt to defend China’s reputation after the latest in a string of safety problems when the world’s largest toy maker, Mattel, recalled millions of Chinese-made toys tainted with toxic lead paint.

Li Changjiang, director of the general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine, said he believed there was a "new trend in trade protectionism."

The program was the latest in China’s recent push to prove it is a safe manufacturer and exporter of goods amid discoveries by countries around the world of high levels of chemicals and toxins in Chinese products from toothpaste to fish.

But Mandelson warned that the EU would contest in the strongest terms any Chinese move to create a pretext for retaliatory action.

"Action should be taken where this is needed but otherwise the bulk of our trade should continue as normal," he said. "I will not accept claims of toxicity being used as a pretext for protectionism. Equally, I will give firm backing to European companies having to reject goods that are dangerous to consumers, including young children."

Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, backed up Mandelson.

"What we need to be sure of, is that the security norms are respected, particularly on products for children," Lagarde said.

Both EU and French officials stressed that they would not discriminate against one country. But China is the source of close to half of all problem consumer products - excluding food - seized by the EU last year. To some extent, this reflects trade flows, since over a quarter of all goods the EU imports are from China.

Even before the Mattel recall, EU officials had asked China to report back regularly on what it was doing to improve toy safety.

More than 99 percent of the China’s food exports are safe, the information office of China’s cabinet said last week, though it conceded that small producers were defying safety standards to maximize growth.

Up to 30 percent of the small producers failed quality standards last year, according to an report released Friday. The government forced 8,814 producers to shut, took action against 5,631 and forced 5,385 companies to improve their production, the report said.

Trade tensions with China are already high as its trade surplus with the rest of the world continues to balloon. Mandelson claimed in June that he had won recognition from China that it needed to do something to avoid trouble as pressure grows in the EU and United States to bring in trade sanctions.

The EU has asked China to help soothe potential problems with the lifting of textile quotas next year and called on Beijing to be more open to foreign businesses trying to break their way into the world’s most populous market.