The encyclopedia · Marketing & Brand · Marketing decision · 2025
Hubei Fuzè promised 90%+ eel-seedling survival it couldn't prove — ¥30k fine
From July 2025 a Hubei seller's livestream promised 90%+ yellow-eel seedling survival and a Huazhong Agricultural tie-up; Xiantao regulators fined it ¥30k.
Hubei Fuzé Ecological Agriculture · 2025
What happened
Hubei Fuzé Ecological Agriculture Technology (湖北福泽生态农业技术有限公司) pushed yellow-eel seedlings (黄鳝苗) through a livestream in July 2025, steering viewers to leave their contact details so salespeople could phone them and close the sale.
The on-camera pitch promised outcomes that agriculture almost never delivers cleanly. The host said 'we guarantee everyone who raises them succeeds' and 'the fry survival rate must reach over 90%'. It also leaned on a research pedigree that did not exist: the stream claimed the seedlings were 'a Fuzé 2 bred with Huazhong Agricultural University's fisheries research institute', supplying 'elite fry, sieved layer by layer, with survival as high as 95%'.
When Xiantao market regulators asked for the supporting evidence behind the 90% survival guarantee and the 华中农业大学 collaboration, the firm could produce none.
In November 2025 the Xiantao bureau ordered it to stop and fined it 30,000 yuan for false and misleading commercial promotion under the Anti-Unfair-Competition Law.
Why it happened
- A livestream sold a living, variable product — fish fry survival depends on water, feeding and buyer handling — with a flat money-back confidence guarantee no farm can back.
- Naming a university research tie-up sounded like authority, but the partnership was asserted on camera and never evidenced when the regulator asked.
- Moving the sale to a phone call after the stream let the seller promise freely and left no recorded script to check.
- For a farmer buying seed stock, a false survival number is not a marketing puff — it is the difference between a crop and a loss.
The lesson
A promise of '90% survival, bred by a university at 95%' is a promise someone will have to keep. Sell seedlings on verifiable sourcing, not on guarantees you cannot document.
Aftermath
The Xiantao market regulator ordered Hubei Fuzé Ecological Agriculture Technology to correct its practices and fined it 30,000 yuan under the Anti-Unfair-Competition Law after it could not substantiate the 90% survival guarantee or the claimed Huazhong Agricultural University collaboration. The case was published among the SAMR's sixth batch of typical livestream e-commerce cases.
Sources
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