The Agriculture Department confirmed the first case of mad cow disease in America on December 23, 2003, in a cow born in Alberta, Canada, in April 1997, only four months before the United States and Canada began banning the use of brain and spinal cord tissue in cattle feed.

CNN: USDA quarantines 2 farms in mad cow investigation

Republicans are the first to sacrifice a sacred cow.

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Among his first purchases: a glass container holding a cow's rotting head, with maggots and flies, by a recent art school graduate named Damien Hirst.

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