Agriculture, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Legislation, Markets and Companies

"The plan is to buy to the state's operating reserves 500 tonnes of the canned pork made of meat that comes from pig farms in the restricted areas (the so-called zone III), in order to stabilize the markets and to give manufacturers time to adapt to the new market situation," said the Minister for Rural Affairs Urmas Kruuse.

"With the help of the measure, the plan is to take in three months nearly 500 pigs a week from the restricted areas (the so-called zone III) to meat industries," said Kruuse. Together with the production of the preserves and storage, the cost of the measure is 1.782 million euros till the end of 2016 and it comes from the government's reserve fund.

The government also agreed to the proposal of the Minister of Rural Affairs to request from the European Commission the European Union's common agricultural policy market organisation emergency support, which helps, as a one-off measure, to compensate to the pig farmers of restricted areas the price fall caused by trade restrictions. The European Commission decision is needed to implement the measure and the Estonian state has to finance a half the cost.