Hampton Creek Foods, a tech-centric San Francisco food startup that develops plant-based egg replacement products, has attracted some very high-profile investors, including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and lots of media attention in the past year. Enough attention, apparently, to make the old-fashioned, chicken-based egg establishment nervous: The American Egg Board's "Incredible, Edible Egg" campaign has begun running Google ads against search terms matching Hampton Creek Foods, their products, and even the name of an executive.

Josh Tetrick, the CEO of Hampton Creek, says that the company aims to poach industrial egg farmers' market share by engineering an array of products that can do everything eggs do, except better (and for less money). As The Wall Street Journal's Farhad Manjoo wrote in a profile on the company, "Hampton Creek wants to 'surpass' the egg, to make eggless foods that taste better, are free of cholesterol, last longer on the shelf, are more ecologically sustainable and humane, and are far cheaper than their eggy counterparts."