It's an artificial reduction in suffering and death. It's a genetic loan that will one day be repaid, with interest.
Continually applying harsh selection criteria just homogenizes a population to a local maxima and leaves them vulnerable to future change.
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?
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.