Background Guangdong Province in the Pearl River Delta of Southeast China is among the areas in the country with the highest rates of avian flu cases. regression shows that consumers tended not to support the policy if they were males, if they were concerned with the food security of chilled products, and if they favored purchasing live poultry. Live-poultry traders tended not to support if they were subsidized by the government, if they were males, if they experienced a drop in trading volume, and if they were unclear whether avian flu was a 24, 25-Dihydroxy VD3 supplier preventable disease. Finally, poultry farm workers tended not to 24, 25-Dihydroxy VD3 supplier support if they experienced a drop in trading volume, if they operated a poultry Slit3 farm on a small to medium level, and if they experienced inconvenience in their work due to the policy. Conclusions The study reveals a substantial refusal or slowness to accept the policy. Failure to accept the policy results from varying reasons. Among consumers, concern about food safety and dietary preference are two major causes of disapproval. Policy acceptability among live-poultry workers diverges within the two sub-groups. While a large percentage of poultry farm workers accept the policy, the drop in trading and an insufficient subsidy hamper acceptance by live-poultry traders. We recommend that policy-makers promote health education and alleviate the policy impact on trading with a reformed subsidy policy to increase acceptability. These findings are crucial for the prevention of human-infected H7N9 cases in Guangdong. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4374-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Cities labeled by consecutive figures ranging from 2 to 15. 2?=?Shenzhen; 3?=?Dongguan; 4?=?Foshan; 5?=?Zhongshan; … Table 1 Key Elements of Central Slaughtering of Live Poultry Policy Because the CSLPP is usually a new policy, questions still need to be clarified on perceptions and attitudes of this policy among general consumers and poultry workers. Although a previous paper assessed consumers attitudes toward central slaughtering, its findings were confined to the city of Guangzhou [21], and further work is needed to determine if those findings can be extrapolated to other parts of Guangdong Province. Also, influential factors of public acceptance of the CSLPP require further study for the successful long-term implementation of the policy. Therefore, the current study aims to assess and better understand the acceptability of the CSLPP and its influential factors among consumers and live-poultry workers on a larger level in Guangdong Province. Methods This study is usually a cross-sectional observation in assessment of attitudes among consumers and live-poultry workers toward the CSLPP, conducted from October to November, 2015. Live-poultry workers are sub-grouped into live-poultry traders and poultry farm workers. Stratified three-stage random sampling and online/field recruitment were employed in sampling of participants (Additional file 1: Table S1). The 21 prefectural-level cities in Guangdong were stratified into cities that are located in the Pearl River Delta region and those that are not. A total of 15 cities were randomly selected using the random number method in the first stage. Live-poultry markets and live-poultry farms were randomly selected using the random number method in the second stage. Participants were then randomly selected in the final stage. We designed different questionnaires to survey attitudes toward the CSLPP among consumers and the two sub-groups of live-poultry workers. Interviewers were recruited and trained to comply with uniform survey protocol so that the quality of the survey was ensured. We followed the guidelines of the STROBE (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology) Statement in this paper. Sample collection Sampling of consumersWe defined the population of consumers as those who lived in Guangdong and experienced once purchased or consumed live-poultry products. Consumers of live-poultry products living in the 15 cities were recruited as participants for the study. In sampling consumers, we adopted both field and online recruitment (Additional file 24, 25-Dihydroxy VD3 supplier 1: Table S1). Field surveys were carried out in Guangzhou, Foshan, and Shenzhen, where we deployed our trained interviewers at market entrances and randomly selected consumers as they joined. The 24, 25-Dihydroxy VD3 supplier markets were also randomly selected. Consumers were asked if they or their family had purchased live poultry before (screening question). We further investigated consumers who gave a positive reply and expressed willingness to participate in the survey. To recruit consumers in other cities, notices about the questionnaire were posted on WeChat, including a link to an external survey website where participants were able to click on and fill out the questionnaire. The trained interviewers used the same screening question above to identify potential participants in their chat-groups.