Poland's top court has outlawed the ritual slaughter of animals weeks before the EU is due to allow the practice on religious grounds.
The Constitutional Tribunal said it was against Polish law to allow animals to have their throats cut and bleed to death without first being stunned.
Poland has small Muslim and Jewish communities who use such methods.
However, it is unclear whether the ruling will be superseded by a new EU law allowing ritual slaughter.
On 1 January, a new regulation takes effect in the EU allowing the practice and setting common standards.
Poland's Agriculture Minister Stanislaw Kalemba told Polish radio the EU law took precedence, and would remove any doubt about the legality of the practice.
His ministry has awarded licences to at least 17 slaughterhouses to carry out ritual killing of animals.
But campaigners against cruelty to animals believe the EU law allows for individual countries to set their own rules.
Before the Polish ruling, Sweden was the only state in the EU which banned the ritual slaughter of animals.
'Up to us'The court considered the case following a petition by Polish animal welfare groups, Polish radio reports.
Attorney General Andrzej Seremet argued that a 2004 amendment allowing ritual slaughter on religious grounds was unconstitutional in that it contravened animal rights legislation dating back to 1997.
End Quote Piotr Kadlcik Union of Jewish Communities of PolandIt appears there is a legal contradiction here and it is too early to tell what this means"
Under the 1997 laws, slaughter should only "follow the loss of consciousness" after a farm animal is stunned.
Animal welfare campaigners argue that the incoming EU regulations allow individual member states to request an exception.
"It's up to us to decide whether we want a law authorising this kind of slaughter or not," Dariusz Gzyra of the campaign group Empatia told AFP news agency.
But critics fear the court's ruling will send a message of intolerance to religious minorities in Poland, a bastion of Roman Catholicism in Europe.
Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski has defended ritual slaughter as an ancient practice.
Last year, following a similar debate in the Netherlands, he said a Dutch bill to outlaw ritual slaughter targeted "the Muslim and Jewish community" and represented "a crisis of tolerance" in Europe.
Responding to the ban in Poland, Piotr Kadlcik, president of the country's Union of Jewish Communities, said the ruling appeared to contradict a 1997 Polish law on relations between his Union and the Polish state.
"It appears there is a legal contradiction here and it is too early to tell what this means," he was quoted as saying by The Times Of Israel.
"We are seeking legal advice on this right now."
Big businessKosher meat (slaughtered according to Jewish practice) has particular significance in Poland because the country was Europe's Jewish heartland before the Nazi Holocaust.
Some 90% of Poland's Jewish population of three million were murdered. Today just 6,000 Jews remain in a country of 38.3 million, according to the European Jewish Congress.
Poland's Muslims can be numbered in the tens of thousands.
However, Poland is now a producer of both kosher and halal (slaughtered according to Islamic practice) meat for export, selling to Arab countries, Turkey and Israel, the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reports.
The value of exports from Poland's kosher and halal abattoirs last year is estimated at 200m euros (£162m; $259m), AFP reports.
The new EU regulation notes that the EU allows a "derogation from stunning in case of religious slaughter taking place in slaughterhouses".
"It is important that derogation from stunning animals prior to slaughter should be maintained, leaving, however, a certain level of subsidiarity to each Member State," it says.
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