Undercover Under a False Name: Samara Eckardt on Her Years Inside the Animal Industry

Six years as a tenured civil servant, then almost three years undercover in a piglet production facility: Samara Eckardt is one of Germany's best-known animal rights activists. In episode #102 of the PLANTBASED. podcast, the founder of Team Tierschutz explains how she got into an animal welfare certified factory farm under a false name, why she calls her bare face her “secret weapon”, and why she refuses to call the people working inside these farms monsters. Here are the key passages from our conversation. For the full story, listen to the episode.

Tenured for life, and she quit anyway

Samara Eckardt was a special needs teacher with a job for life. In the podcast she describes why that stopped being enough:

“I was tenured for life and earned really good money. I was happy in my job. But at some point it wasn't enough anymore. I have never felt such passion and such fulfilment as doing front-line animal rights activism.”

The way in was almost absurdly simple: as a teacher, she called a local pig farm about student internships. What she really wanted was to see what happens behind those walls, and to rescue two piglets. How one visit turned into almost three years is in the episode from minute 6.

“It was like a horror film”

“I was in there and it was like a horror film. Like a parallel world. Unbelievable amounts of suffering, pain and empty eyes. Metal everywhere, concrete everywhere, nothing warm. It is simply a factory, a naked, filthy factory.”

After her first visit she suffered a breakdown. She went back in anyway, with a clear rationale: she could legally document what other activists have to break in at night to film. Today she speaks openly about her complex PTSD diagnosis and why she looked for a vegan therapist.

“These products do not exist. Full stop.”

Asked about organic labels and “happy cows”, Samara talks about a Demeter farm she tried to transition:

“I walked in and the cows were in tethered housing, standing on chains, looking terrible. The more you engage with it, the more you know: these products do not exist. They simply do not exist. Full stop.”

Team Tierschutz: three facilities shut down in one year

In 2024 Samara founded her own organisation. Team Tierschutz works investigatively and deliberately puts faces in front of the camera instead of anonymous shock footage. The first year's record, as she describes it: three facilities closed, including a slaughter operation where, according to her account, animals were killed without stunning and customers were even handed the knife themselves.

Why small farms can be shut down while huge industrial facilities practically never are, she explains from minute 40. It is one of the most sobering parts of the conversation.

Undercover as “Caro Bollack”: the new documentary

For Team Tierschutz's latest release (“Unter Schweinen”), Samara applied for a job at a large piglet production company under a false name. Her disguise: her own face.

“I have a secret weapon. Without makeup I look completely different from what people imagine. It has been my biggest insecurity since I was 14. And now I get to use it for something really good.”

“She said: I want to be honest, I am a little afraid you might be an animal rights activist. I always find something, I am so good at googling. And I found nothing on you. If she had asked for my ID at that moment, it would have been over. But she never asked.”

The documentary is available on the Team Tierschutz YouTube channel. We covered the film and the case behind it in detail: “Unter Schweinen”: what Team Tierschutz documented inside the facility (in German).

“Are they monsters? No.”

“The man you see smashing piglets onto the floor: I feel deep contempt for what he does. And yet I also feel pity. I know what this system does to animals. I also know first-hand what this system does to people. This system makes people sick. It turns people into monsters. There is no other way.”

Her plea to her own community: direct the anger at the system and those profiting from it, not at the workers.

Jona, sow number 2445

On Samara's arm there is a tattooed number: 2445. It is the ear tag number of a sow who was not afraid of her. Samara named her Jona and eventually brought her and eleven piglets to a sanctuary in Poland. Sanctuaries like this are what our German-language sanctuary atlas maps.

“She is not a number. Her name is Jona.”

How to support this work

Team Tierschutz runs on one and a half paid positions; Samara says she works 60 to 80 hours a week. You can support the organisation from 5 euros a month via a team membership. And if you want to know how to report animal cruelty videos online, listen to our episode with Wiebke Plasse of Welttierschutzgesellschaft. The two conversations complement each other perfectly. For the film itself and the background to the case, see our article “Unter Schweinen”: Team Tierschutz releases film on the Köselitz case (in German).

Note: quotes are taken from the podcast conversation and lightly edited for readability. Descriptions of individual farms reflect the account of Samara Eckardt and Team Tierschutz. Dieses Interview gibt es auch auf Deutsch: Samara Eckardt im Interview.