How animals are treated , is certainly a cultural thing. I remember my grand father putting an excessive amount of kittens , when the mama cat had them , into a bag and taking them to the river. Could it have being handled alternatively , im sure it could , but it was just the way things were done. I look back at how dogs were treated when i was little and it was pretty bad, they were fed potato skins , and sometimes not fed at all , our poor dog went blind in the end , and disappeared. Yet all these people that were responsible for the animals were nice people , some of the best. I do think there is a cultural element to all this.