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1. Business operators shall ensure that persons responsible for stunning or other nominated staff carry out regular checks to ensure that the animals do not present any signs of consciousness or sensibility in the period between the end of the stunning process and death. Those checks shall be carried out on a sufficiently representative sample of animals and their frequency shall be established taking into account the outcome of previous checks and any factors which may affect the efficiency of the stunning process. When the outcome of the checks indicates that an animal is not properly stunned, the person in charge of stunning shall immediately take the appropriate measures as specified in the standard operating procedures drawn up in accordance with Article 6(2).

2. Where, for the purpose of Article 4(4), animals are killed without prior stunning, persons responsible for slaughtering shall carry out systematic checks to ensure that the animals do not present any signs of consciousness or sensibility before being released from restraint and do not present any sign of life before undergoing dressing or scalding.

3. For the purpose of paragraphs 1 and 2, business operators may use checking procedures as described in the guides to good practice referred to in Article 13.

4. Where appropriate, in order to take account of the high level of reliability of certain stunning methods and on the basis of an opinion of EFSA, derogations from the requirements laid down in paragraph 1 may be adopted in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 25(2).