Thousands of tonnes of the delicacy are poached yearly by organised smugglers - a lucrative trade that is wreaking havoc with fish stocks.

Officials on Sakhalin say anything up to half the 100,000-tonne yearly catch is fished illegally to feed demand in Russia and abroad.

Red caviar comes from salmon, rather than the more famous black sturgeons' roe, but this pigs' breakfast would still cost almost $750,000 on Western high streets.

The battle against the illegal caviar trade is one the under-funded Russian police are still far from winning.

This week's haul was given to the pigs to counter allegations by some smugglers that local police have been selling on confiscated caviar.

Proof that crime does not pay, police are telling the caviar Mafia, and by all accounts the pigs were happy to rub their noses in it.