Animals keep dying

I know it's a bug that has been around for a while, and as it is getting rather game breaking, I need to know if this was ever addressed or if anyone did see it mentioned by EA. EA hired a group of devs to fix bugs months ago, and I'd say that this bug should have been on their top 5 list.

I'm playing rotationally with aging off, and I checked the "no animal aging" in the game settings. In the past this worked fine, but at some point (3 months ago, or was it caused by Life & Death?) it seems like animals are aging while their household is not played. When I stop by a lot to check something or to play, the first thing to happen is that Grim Reaper shows up to  collect the dying animals. I think this affects all animals connected to some object and not being part of the 8 sims household. Chicken, mini goats and sheep are all falling like flies. I think horses, cats and dogs are safe (not sure), and I did not check on cows and llamas.

I'll now be forced to make all my sims owning chicken and mini-pets to trade all their stock for meet, and not allow anyone to get new livestock until this bug is fixed. My farmers will get real annoyed, they are supposed to make a living from this... So much gameplay from Cottage Living and Horse Ranch is no longer playable, and I know this has happened to other simmers, too.

Is there any news on this subject? Does EA think we shall no longer have animals in our games? Or is Grim Reaper the bad guy, after all?