Silicon Valley wants to give us eggs without chickens, and meat without animals. Do we want that?

Just is at the forefront of an industry-wide arms race to reinvent the future of protein as we know it—a push toward products we’ll readily accept as meat, but that don’t require animals to be sacrificed on the altar of our hunger. These “alternative” proteins are about to hit the American market in two varieties, both of which manage to sidestep the messier realities of the farm and slaughterhouse. First, there are “plant-based” proteins, vegetable-derived simulacra that convincingly mimic the taste and texture of animal flesh. Just’s eggless scramble is one example, though the best-known example may be the Impossible Burger, an eerily meat-like plant burger that oozes with soy-derived “blood” to approximate the texture of medium-rare ground beef. Though that product is still in limited release, Beyond Meat, Impossible’s primary competitor, has started selling its futuristic “plant-based meat products”—an oxymoron if ever there was one—in stores across the country. Companies like these hope their next-generation meat substitutes will see the same success in the meat case that soy and almond milks—even oat, pea, and algae milks—have already seen in the dairy aisle. “Clean meat,” on the other hand, is real, biological meat. But rather than harvest it from the bodies of living animals, clean meat companies grow it from cultured cells inside a lab. Memphis Meats, a food technology startup that promises “meat without slaughter,” has received backing from Tyson, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson. These products aren’t commercially available yet, but they’re close on the horizon if corporate promises can be believed: Memphis Meats says its first cultured beef product will be available in supermarkets by 2021, and Just has pledged to sell its “clean” chicken by the end of 2018. Call it the alt-protein revolution. It’s coming, and faster than you might think.