But still we do take the eggs of hens without their consent. We do force animals into lives of domesticity and hard labour work without asking their opinion first. We do effectively imprison animals in farms and zoos and homes to the point where they are institutionalised and can no longer survive in natural environments.
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If consent is the only issue as regards morality then is keeping a pet rabbit, hamster or goat (against it's will) just as immoral as sexual intercourse with a sheep?
If consent is the only issue, then keeping a rabbit is certainly equally immoral, but consent isn't the only issue. When any given person is making a moral decision there are a number of ways of doing it. A common way (these days at least) is to look to moral philosophies that are consequentialist. We start with a moral premise such as 'minimize harm' and then examine the consequences of any given action to see if it agrees with the premise.
Penetrating an animal's genitals with your own might minimize the psychological harm to you (not suppressing desire), but it might increase the harm to the animal. We need a decision on this - I say, another premise needs to be put forward: Err on the side of a party that might be harmed if in doubt. Thus, we cannot know if the animal's welfare is being harmed by the act, but since it is likely to do so in some cases we should err on their side. This second premise is inline with the first in my opinion.
If an animal shows consent, if it is doing the penetration for example, we might consider the act moral, or at least not sufficiently immoral to bother us.
I consider there is more good done in keeping and protecting animals, than harm is done. I equally realize that paying breeders to breed more animals to be kept might be more morally grey - then again breeding animals for the sake of conservation is probably more moral than for the sake of company.
Likewise I consider it more harmful to not farm animals than it is to farm them. It is easier to maintain stock levels through farming them than if we do not, and with the population density the way it is - we'd wipe out whole species to feed ourselves (see the result of not farming animals but hunting them, America lost its bovine friend, the seas are losing stock faster than it is able to replenish them etc).
With a simple moral premise or two and a philosophy up to the task, as well as some subjective judgements) it is straightforward to determine that bestiality is often morally wrong but stealing eggs is morally right.
As shown, 'bestiality' can no more be said to be wrong than 'killing' can. One thing is forever true: we can never have complete information and we will tend to draw a line even if we accept morally grey exists. The questions are 'where?' and 'why?'.
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