A popular Chinese livestreaming account centred on host Dong Yuhui has been plunged into another public controversy after a packaged chicken product promoted on its platform was challenged by a local poultry industry association in Anhui province. The Lu'an-based Mahuang Chicken Industry Association publicly questioned the product's provenance, breeding cycle and economics, saying it could not reconcile the seller's claims that the chickens were genuine "Wanxi Mahuang" birds with local production records and typical costs.
The association's chairman, Li Shujun, who controls a local processing company, published multiple videos accusing the seller of mislabelling and of overstating the rarity and age of the birds. He told viewers that no suppliers in the Wanxi area had sold the volumes claimed to the merchant, that truly local Mahuang hens raised for 500 days would cost well above 150 yuan apiece, and that annual output of such birds in the region is limited to under 20,000 units. After Li's posts, screenshots he supplied show the product page's earlier claim of "Wanxi Mahuang chicken" was removed; he later took down several of his own high-profile clips amid the controversy.
The merchant chain behind the listing — production credited to Anhui Huading Food Co., with Anhui Baishixuan Ecological Agriculture as the commissioning seller — and the livestreaming account’s customer service offered rebuttals. They described "mahuang" as a colloquial term for feather colour used across provinces, presented laboratory reports attesting to the absence of prohibited residues, and said the product on sale was a "yellow-fat mother chicken" with breeding cycles of roughly 300–400 days. Local packaging did not carry an explicit Mahuang label, but archived short videos show the host and others referring to the birds as coming from Wanxi and invoking traditional qualities associated with older free-range hens.
Regulators in Anhui have begun enquiries. Market supervision bureaus in Huoqiu county and Feixi county said they were investigating supply records and labelling, while the Anhui commerce department said the dispute appears to hinge on competing definitions of breed standards rather than clear-cut false advertising. This is the latest in a string of product disputes tied to the same livestreaming account: earlier episodes included complaints about sofa manufacturing claims, contested provenance and lab test disputes over herbal patches, milk powders and frozen shrimp, some culminating in product recalls and large compensation pledges.
The episode exposes a structural tension at the heart of China’s livestreaming commerce: enormous order volumes and high-speed promotions can amplify small gaps in provenance and quality control into reputational crises. The host’s platform reported exploding sales — third-party data cited annual live-sales gross merchandise value above 210 billion yuan in 2025 — but those figures coexist with repeated supplier disputes and allegations of misleading marketing. Merchants and platforms point to multilayer test regimes and third-party checks; industry critics answer that uneven standards between labs, opaque supply chains and marketing incentives still leave room for error and opportunism.
For consumers and regulators the immediate stakes are concrete: differentiating legitimately produced regional breeds from generic or rebranded stock affects pricing, rural incomes and public trust. For the livestreamer and platform the threat is reputational and regulatory: scaled commercial success draws sharper scrutiny, and multiple incidents erode the implicit guarantee audiences place in curators. Expect intensified demands for certified traceability, standardised naming rules for poultry categories, and stricter verification of provenance in platform listings — and an uptick in local enforcement actions if the pattern of disputes continues.