Welfare of animals at the time of killing regulations.

2.1 The Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing Regulations 2014 (“the WATOK Regulations”) were due to come into force in England on 20th May 2014 with the purpose of replacing the Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995 (S.I. 1995/731) (“the 1995 Regulations”) in order to make provision for the administration and enforcement in England of Council Regulation (EC) 1099/2009 of 24th September 2009 on the protection of animals at the time of killing (“the EU Regulation”). The EU Regulation introduces a series of new, directly applicable operational requirements including stunning parameters in Annex 1 of the regulation, improvements to chicken shackle lines and requirements to the construction, layout and equipment of slaughterhouses. In addition, it provides for a derogation to Member States to allow religious slaughter without prior stunning and permits them to maintain existing national rules which provided for more extensive protection of animals at slaughter if those rules were in force at the time the EU Regulation came into force. The WATOK Regulations therefore also contained national rules. The inter-relationship between the EU Regulation and national law is complex.