By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Hyping China's food and product safety problem is a sickness in itself, the country's new health minister said on Wednesday, a day after Mattel announced a third global recall of Chinese-made toys.

A series of scandals involving sub-standard Chinese exports ranging from pet food, fish and toothpaste to toys has put increasing pressure on Beijing to clean up its manufacturing sector.

In the latest incident, the world's leading toymaker, Mattel Inc <MAT.N>, said it would take back more than 800,000 units of Fisher-Price models and Barbie brand playsets because of "impermissible" levels of lead.

China's government insists the problem is a limited one, that the huge majority of its exports are up to standard and that the Western media in particular has been irresponsible in its reporting on the issue, intentionally fanning the flames.

"I must remind some friends that we are certainly extremely sensitive towards this problem, but over-sensitivity caused by only seeing part of the picture, in medical terms, is called an allergy," Health Minister Chen Zhu said.

"I want to tell everyone that they can have confidence in the quality of Chinese products and food safety," he said in his first major news conference since taking up the post in late June.

China was ready to work with the international community to tackle the issue, added Chen, a Paris-trained scientist who unusually is not a member of the ruling Communist Party.

"I also want to explicitly say that we support media supervision over health work."

But Chen also criticised the media for some of their reports of a South Korean diplomat in China who died after being admitted to hospital with suspected food poisoning from a sandwich.

Diplomat Whang Joung-il did not die of a "food-originated disease", Chen said, adding that the ministry had handed the results of a probe into his case over to South Korea.

"His case should not be hyped by any media, as this is not humanitarian," he added.

Chen did not give the cause of death.

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