The government is proposing no major changes to rules governing shechitah and religious slaughter after a public consultation.

Animal rights groups renewed calls for prohibiting the slaughter of animals without stunning before any cut.

But the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in its summary of responses, said that “existing national rules will be retained in relation to religious slaughter”.

The rules, it said, limit slaughter “without prior stunning to the slaughter of bovine animals, sheep, goats and birds by a Jew for the food of Jews or by a Muslim for the food of Muslims”.