Baltic Export, Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, Latvia, Legislation, Markets and Companies

There is a "very high" chance a ban will be imposed, the official said.

The board's experts came to this decision following inspections at five Latvian and four Estonian fish processing companies, which mainly deal with production of sprats.

"The inspectors were very concerned about what they saw, – it was impossible to recognize the security system control of the production as efficient, also with regard to benzopyrene," Ponomarev explained.

At the end of March, Rosselhoznadzor detected excessive amounts of benzopyrene in Latvian sprats.

As reported, in August 2014 Russia banned import of most food products from the EU, United States and other Western countries that had adopted sanctions against Moscow. Russia's embargo concerns beef, pork, fruit, vegetables, poultry, fish, cheese, milk and dairy products.