"At the moment, there are intensive discussions going on," Merkel told the foreign press association in Berlin. "Naturally, I hope that this can be solved by the end of the year, because every problem that we do not inherit is good."
Poland has blocked talks on a new wide-ranging partnership agreement between the European Union and Russia, insisting that Moscow first lift the ban.
However, the meat ban has created a windfall for some Polish food companies by forcing them to focus more on other markets, exporters say.
Biernacki, a unit of Polish food group Duda, was Poland's largest meat exporter to Russia before the ban, sending half its products to Russia in 2005.
But even with Eastern Europe's biggest country off limits, the company expects to triple its revenues for 2006, thanks to a boom in sales to South Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan and Western Europe.
"The ban made us mobilize in different places," said CEO Wojciech Biernacki. "Our income this year will be 300 percent higher than in 2005."
The Polish agricultural ministry says the embargo is costing Poland, Central Europe's largest food producer, at least $1.3 million per day.
But that figure does not take into account gains Polish companies have made by shifting their products to other markets and it obscures the success the industry as a whole has had since Poland entered the EU in 2004.
The value of meat exports rose 17 percent year on year to $1.09 billion in the first eight months of 2006, according to the Polish Institute of Agricultural Economics and Food Trade.
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