They had arrived before the big, rubber flanged double doors of the vat room. “Please try not to cough or sneeze,” Mr. Fremden cautioned them. “The culture infects very easily at this stage. We used to take groups of school children through, but we had to stop it when we lost two consecutive batches of Juicimeet. It’s so difficult to make children be careful and clean.”

('Lazarus' by Margaret St. Clair)

The doors swung open as he pressed a series of buttons. The three editors followed Mr. Fremden in, aping his cautious step. The doors closed promptly behind them again.

The vat room was enormous, the size of a hangar, and all its floor space, except for the four-foot wide walk around the walls, was occupied by the waist-high, glass-lined vat. The air was faintly steamy, and a curious smell, a little like blood, a little like ammonia, came to the nose.

"The metal catwalks you see high above the surface of the vat," Fremden said in the tone of a lecturer, “are used to harvest the protein crop. If you’ll look up — ”their glances followed his gesture — “you’ll see the machinery by which they are lowered into place. I’m sorry there’s not more to see now. Please remember what I told you, and keep back.”

...It was the food editor from Homemaker, Mrs. Timens, who asked the next question, oddly enough. “Tell me,” she said, leaning her comfortable frame toward him, “ — perhaps it’s a silly question, but I don’t understand technical things — tell me, does it ever feel anything?”

“Does it — ” Mr. Fremden repeated momentarily at sea.

“The stuff. What you’re growing in the vat.”

“Oh.” Under his mask, he licked his lips. It was a waste of time, but after he answered her he might be able to get them out. “I see what you mean. No, it feels nothing. It cannot.

“Several elements have to be present,” he repeated. “There has to be a receptor — a sense organ, like the eye or the ear or the skin surface, where sense impressions are received. There have to be neurones; or nerve cells, to transmit the sense message. And there has to be an adjustor, like the brain, where the messages are sorted, processed, and referred out again to the effectors, like muscles and glands, to be acted upon.”

They were fascinated now; he could see it in their faces. If there came a rumble now, they would ignore it. He drew a deep breath.

“None of these elements — receptors, neurones, or adjustors — is present in Juicimeet. Juicimeet is grown from ‘seed,’ or clumps of cells from the muscle tissue of animals — ” here Mr. Fremden had to control an urge to lower his voice — “which were specially bred and selected for juiciness, tenderness, and palatability. There are no nerve fibers in Juicimeet! That is one of the reasons for its deliciousness.

“These clumps of cells are spaced evenly — or, as we call it, seeded — throughout the culture medium. The solution is very carefully controlled; it changes from hour to hour as various enzymes, activators, charges of oxygen and so forth are added. The result is that in some six days the isolated clumps of cells grow to a solid, delicious mass, weighing many tons, of Juicimeet. And incidentally, when you leave each of you will be given a neat cellophane wrapped package of Juicibeef so that you can experience for yourselves, if you haven’t already done so, how delicious it is. We recommended it for broiling, grilling, roasting, or as kebabs.

“Juicimeet is subject to a continuous process of selection. In each batch, some cells respond better to the nutrient solution than do others. It is from these superior cells that the new batch is grown. Juicimeet — ” under the gauze mask he beamed at them — “becomes better all the time.”

“And it can’t feel anything — ” Miss Paura murmured.

“Because it has neither neurones, receptors, nor adjustors. Exactly. It is animal muscle tissue, nothing more.

“It is just this absence of sensation that has recommended Juicimeet so highly to humanitarians. Bernard Shaw used to say, you know, that he wanted to be followed to his graye by a procession bf all the animals he hadn’t eaten while he was alive. Nowadays a humane man can eat a delicious, tender, yummy Juicibeef steak every day of his life, and be sure that no single living creature has suffered because of his appetite.