His sensitivities also include most processed foods. Additionally, he has issues with a lot of types of beans. Corn is also an issue, including HFCS. Note: I am not privy to his actual diagnoses, I just know that a lot of his diet was worked out trial and error with his doctor overseeing.

For protein, he gets eggs and chicken. I kept the chickens on a carefully controlled diet (which, by the way, they absolutely LOVE) of meal worms, grains, and greens. The eggs they lay he can eat without triggering any of his sensitivities. I stagger some meat birds in with these chickens on that diet so there is one ready to slaughter each week. I process the birds using only boiling water for sanitation and they are generally in her freezer within an hour of their last cluck.

And best of all, in his mind, he gets to come pet ‘his’ chickens and collect the eggs himself on the weekends. Since she bought a house and they are outside the city limits, in the spring I’m going to help her put up a 4-chicken coop and set up a meal worm farm. I’ll put fertile eggs in the incubator come March-ish from my easter-egg layers and he’ll get to come by to observe the development and hatch.

There will be four happy and probably spoiled chickens and one little boy who can have his favorite breakfast without it sending him into a week long series of melt downs. Egg and goat-cheese on gluten-free bread means he’ll be able to actually hold conversations. With the chickens he can join 4H and have some socialization outside of his special needs classes.

Pet, food, and hobby. Chickens are AWESOME!

And the little boogers haven’t laid me an egg in a month.

Note: We also grow a lot of crops to create the terrible corn-based bio-fuel. Soooooooo many better options out there for fuel than corn, but noooooo, we can’t use those, that would be silly.

I think Gategrrl had a good idea with “agree to disagree” and I also like what Cinnabar suggests about gently reminding him that his position is inconsistent and therefore difficult for you to debate. I have friends where I have just plain banned a certain topic – religion, usually. Because I really don’t want to disrespect their beliefs, but OTOH, I don’t want to hear what I consider to be misogynistic lies and sociopath-benefiting fantasies.

Anyway, about your friend, it really DOES sound like he got drunk or something when he started spouting off and then the brakes failed and he just couldn’t stop until he crashed into a wall of FAIL.

I so understand wanting to avoid conflict for fear of losing a friendship. (Conflict avoiders of the world, unite!) The good advice to give here would be that solid friendships (and even not so solid ones) will weather tiny things like this and come out okay. But I totally understand how hard it is to shake off that feeling, so maybe you can just pretend it didn’t happen and carry on like normal next time you talk? xD

And if he does bring it up again and tries to needle you on it, I like GardenGoblin’s point:

Point out that a leading cause of extinction in animals is their habitat being turned into crop land.

Also, if we all suddenly stopped eating meat, what would happen to all those animals that were bred for consumption? There’s just no space for them all. There would have to be a mass slaughter anyway or we’d probably end up slaves to the New Chicken Overlords.

And most importantly, what is he doing having pets and eating meat while telling you how bad it is to do the same?? WTF?! If he still tries to get into this with you, remind him of this fact CALMLY and continuously. Like for every point he makes, just say over and over, “Don’t you eat meat and have pets too?”, “Hmmm that sounds interesting, but didn’t you enjoy eating X meat dish the other day?”, “Oh by the way, how is little Fluffy doing?” and so on. He’ll cower under the barrage of your cold, impassable logic!