All these projects aim to accelerate the transition towards sustainable and resilient food systems. BETRUE is led by André Nollkaemper, founder and director of SEVEN.

In a global food system under immense pressure, the environmental, health, and social impacts of beef consumption are a pressing challenge. Beef serves as a powerful proxy for examining broader food system dynamics, as it encapsulates systemic tensions and trade-offs. With global population growth accelerating demand, beef production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and land degradation. Consumption of red and processed meat also far exceeds recommended thresholds.

True cost pricing, an instrument that aims to internalise hidden costs by incorporating environmental and societal impacts into market prices, is increasingly recognised as a promising lever for change. It has the potential to address systemic inefficiencies across the food system. However, there has been little research on how true cost pricing might impact the food system. While true pricing is often presented as a systemic alternative, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how it functions in practice.

This project aims to fill these knowledge gaps by investigating how true pricing mechanisms for beef can be embedded in systemic policy and regulatory changes to reduce consumption and support plant-based alternatives. It is grounded in systems change theory, which suggests that small, targeted interventions can create self-reinforcing feedback loops leading to transformative changes.

Within SEVEN, BETRUE involves cooperation between the Amsterdam Law School, Amsterdam UMC, and the Department of Political Science.

BETRUE will be carried out by a consortium that, apart from SEVEN, includes the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Free University of Bolzano, and the University of Copenhagen.