A group of journalists are invited to Caesar Claudius MacDonald’s farm in South New Zealand. MacDonald is a rich corporate owner who quickly made a name for himself by genetically engineering a scientific masterpiece with the potential to cure world hunger: the Butterball, a meat animal, whose entire body can be consumed by humans. The group of journalists, including the narrator, McNair, are the first people to be invited to the farm. When the group arrives, they are greeted by a Public Relations Official, Judson Cotter, who only partially answers the journalists’ questions and seems to be hiding something.  Cotter lets the group into a barn and reveals the secret that the Butterballs have a limited vocabulary and can talk, much like a parrot. However, there are not 2 million of them in the barn, another cause of confusion. Cotter explains that they are kept much further away, but his answer doesn't completely satisfy the journalists, since they have only seen empty fields outside the barn. Some journalists begin asking questions about the sentience of the Butterballs.  The group is then led to the processing plant. The Butterballs are told they are going to heaven to persuade the animals to enthusiastically hop into the plant. Some journalists are horrified by this, and the longer they remain, some of them begin to worry the Butterballs are sentient and do more than just repeat.  Cotter gets worried about the potential for a public scandal and asks the journalists to point out which Butterballs spoke so that he can have them processed. But when he and a handful of journalists go back out to the Butterballs, they don’t say anything, and the reluctant journalists eventually agree that perhaps they aren’t sentient.  After this incident, no other journalists are allowed on the farm. The ones who had toured the facility later describe the Butterballs as the solution to world hunger. However, McNair, the narrator, doesn’t know what to tell the world or how to handle the situation. Instead, he decides to become a vegetarian—a small step, but he wants to start somewhere.