EU judges should strike down a Belgian law requiring all animals to be stunned prior to their death, which has effectively outlawed slaughter according to Jewish and Muslim rites, an EU court adviser said on Thursday.
Gerard Hogan, an advocate general of the Court of Justice of the European Union, said an EU law of 2009 set out that animals should normally be stunned before they are slaughtered, but made a clear exception for slaughter prescribed by religious rites.
EU judges typically follow the opinions of advocate generals although are not bound to do so. They would normally deliver their ruling in two to four months.
The case came to the EU court in Luxembourg after a 2017 decree in the Belgian region of Flanders to amend its law on the protection and welfare of animals by requiring that all animals first be stunned.
Jewish and Muslim associations challenged the decree and Belgium's Constitutional Court referred the case to the EU Court of Justice.
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