Can meat grown in a lab still be called meat? Can milk that comes from nuts rather than cows bear the name milk?

Alternative products populate nearly every aisle of the grocery. Makers of alternative foods, usually from plants, use the terms to signal the product’s use.

But farmers see the new foods as a threat and want the federal government to restrict words like milk, cheese and meat to products that come from animals.

The FDA appears poised to reconsider terms.

“It’s important that we take a fresh look at existing standards of identity in light of marketing trends and the latest nutritional science,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in March.

Some see a risk of confusing consumers, who may think the new products have the same origin. Chocolate-flavored dairy milk is called chocolate milk, for instance, but cashew milk is strained from a mixture of ground cashew paste and water.

Another part of the confusion is tied to the origin of the new meats, which come out of labs and use animal cells.

The debate intensified when Cargill, Tyson, Bill Gates and Richard Branson invested in Memphis Meats, a California-based company using animal cells to make meat. It produced a meatball in 2016 and its first poultry product last year.

Cargill is one of the world’s largest processors of beef, so its involvement is a serious omen: It’s not a matter of if, but when lab-raised meat becomes a player in the market.

The growth in plant-basd alternatives dovetails with another consumer trend: rising demand for protein. American consumers are looking for new ways to pack it into their diets, said David Portalatin, a food industry adviser at the NPD Group.

A survey published last week by NPD Group found that 86 percent of people who buy plant-based alternatives are meat eaters adding to their diet.

Plant-based meat alternatives claimed 2.1 percent of U.S. sales in refrigerated and frozen meat products, according to a Nielsen data study commissioned last year by the Plant Based Foods Association and the Good Food Institute.

Plant-based milk composed 9.3 percent of milk sales. Plant-based cheeses, yogurts and ice creams are growing 20 percent annually.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin last year introduced the Dairy Pride Act to pressure the FDA into enforcing the milk definition.

The FDA has been relatively hands-off with the growth in nondairy milk products. “If consumers were being confused, the FDA might have been more solicitous of these petitions that have been filed,” said Dick Wegener, a food lawyer at Faegre Baker Daniels in Minneapolis.

Groups supporting enforcement often cite consumer protection concerns. Gottlieb said the agency may revisit unnecessary standards.

Grocers and consumer researchers believe people who buy alternative products educate themselves about what the foods actually are.

“We have got to give the American consumer a little more credit. They are more informed than at any other time in history,” Portalatin said.