Centraal Israeltisch Consistorie van Belgie v. Vlaamse Regering

Since 2009, European Council Regulation 1099/2009 had required that animals be stunned prior to being slaughtered. The regulation was intended to protect animal welfare, an objective of general interest recognized in the European Union (EU). The regulation included an exception to the prior-stunning requirement for the slaughter of animals pursuant to specific religious rites if the slaughter occurred in a slaughterhouse. However, the regulation also left some flexibility for EU member states to pass stricter, more extensive animal-welfare regulations. In July 2017, the Flemish Government of Belgium (defendant) amended existing animal-welfare law to prohibit all animals from being slaughtered without prior stunning. The government stated that the slaughtering restriction was intended to eliminate all avoidable animal suffering in the country. The restriction applied to slaughtering performed for religious rites, including Jewish and Islamic religious rites that required an animal to be killed by draining the animal’s blood. Concerning such ritual slaughters, the slaughtering restriction provided for the use of a reversible stunning procedure that could not result in the animal’s death. The government relied on scientific research indicating that the stunning procedure had no major effects on the blood-draining requirements associated with those rites. The Centraal Israeltisch Consistorie van Belgie (plaintiff) brought a challenge in Belgium Constitutional Court, arguing that the slaughtering restriction prevented members of the Jewish and Muslim faiths from obtaining meat from animals that had been slaughtered appropriately under their religions’ requirements, which violated the fundamental right to freedom of religion guaranteed in Article 10 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the charter). The Belgian court referred the matter to the European Union Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling regarding whether Regulation 1099/2009 precluded legislation like the Flemish government’s slaughtering restriction.