I'm at a loss as to why reduction of suffering and death is abhorrent to you.
Continually applying harsh selection criteria just homogenizes a population to a local maxima and leaves them vulnerable to future change.
By far the largest problem of any genetic pool (animals, plants, whatever) is not having enough genetic diversity in it. See: Cavendish bananas, the Tasmanian devil.
I doubt you do any of these things, because you aren't willing to accept the low chance of survival-to-adulthood that typical wild animals have. It may keep their genetics in tip top shape, but is that really what you want?