An eel-fry seller livestreamed a 90% survival claim it couldn't prove

Hubei Fuze Ecological Agriculture Technology sold eel fry — the juvenile stock fish farmers buy to raise to market size — through livestream broadcasts. Two claims anchored the pitch: a guaranteed survival rate above 90% once the fry reached a buyer's pond, and a partnership with Huazhong Agricultural University lending scientific credibility to the stock's quality.

For a fish farmer, survival rate is close to the entire purchase decision — fry are cheap individually but bought by the thousand, and a rate that comes in well under the promise turns a routine restocking order into a loss on the whole batch. A university partnership is the kind of claim a buyer has no easy way to check live on a broadcast, which is exactly why it works as a closer: it borrows credibility the seller hasn't earned.

Xiantao's market regulator in Hubei investigated and found the company could not substantiate either the survival-rate figure or the university relationship. It fined Fuze ¥30,000 in November 2025, one of six livestream-commerce cases the national market regulator circulated the following April.