The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2025
A livestream sold cooking oil with claims about preventing disease
Caozhilou Biotech's livestream ad for its organic perilla seed oil, an ordinary food, claimed disease-prevention effects. It was fined 200,000 yuan.
Caozhilou Biotech · 2025-12
What happened
Inner Mongolia's Caozhilou Biotech ran livestream advertising for its 'organic perilla seed oil alpha-linolenic acid' product, registered and sold as an ordinary cooking oil rather than a health supplement or drug. The broadcasts included content claiming the oil could help prevent and treat disease.
Ordinary food is barred under China's Advertisement Law from making the kind of disease-prevention or treatment claims reserved for products registered and evidenced as health supplements or pharmaceuticals — a distinction that exists precisely so a shopper buying cooking oil isn't led to believe it can substitute for medical treatment.
In December 2025, Hohhot's Saihan district market regulator ruled the broadcasts constituted false advertising and fined Caozhilou Biotech 200,000 yuan. The State Administration for Market Regulation named the case nationally on 31 January 2026 as a model illegal-advertising enforcement example.
Why it happened
- Attaching a disease claim to an everyday cooking oil invited the exact comparison regulators are built to make: what the product is registered as, against what the livestream promised.
- A live pitch delivered by a host reads as personal testimony rather than packaged copy, which made the claim land harder with viewers than the same words printed on a label.
- The claim risked more than a false promise on taste — a shopper who believes a cooking oil helps prevent disease has a reason to delay seeing an actual doctor.
The lesson
A livestream sold ordinary cooking oil claiming it could help prevent disease. The company was fined 200,000 yuan. Everyday food can't borrow medicine's authority just because a host says so.
Aftermath
Hohhot's Saihan district market regulator fined Caozhilou Biotech 200,000 yuan for the false advertising. The State Administration for Market Regulation cited the case nationally on 31 January 2026 as a model enforcement example.
Sources
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