Problem
Thinking about the difficulty in sewing up pigs this morning. In cooking stuffed meats and poultry often get sewn shut before roasting. In a recent conversation about this process I said "Medical students often use pigs feet to practice their sutures." Chef thought that was odd since pork skin in particular is rather tough.
Intuition/Inspiration
It may seem incongruous, but there is a relationship between meat, textiles and medicine. I made the connection while trying to stitch a piece of felt to a wool and silk handbag using a tapestry needle.
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To prevent splitting the already-knit yarn a tapestry needle tip is blunt, no sharper than most knitting needles. The big eye makes it easy to thread all but the bulkiest yarn. For joining pieces of a knitted garment or bag I prefer a gently curved needle which helps find the opening in the knitted stitches.
This is great for hand and machine knits or crochet but the blunt point is a hindrance when it comes to stitching tight fabrics like denim or felt to a knitted piece. It can also be a safety issue: the needle doesn't move easily so we push harder. A bend, slip or break can result in an ugly injury.
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We may be using similar techniques in sewing, cooking and surgery but are we using equivalent tools?
Analysis
There are many different kinds of culinary meat needles. Once the varieties used for tenderizing, injecting or larding are eliminated the trussing needles stand out as the obvious tools for sewing.

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A trussing needle, such as this curved one from Paderno/World Cuisine is very similar to a tapestry needle but with a sharper tip for puncturing. This is fine for birds which have a thinner, more delicate skin, but not really the right tool for pork. |

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A barbecue or rotisserie trussing needle is a heavier guage and features a handle at one end for pushing. That's a big beast, better put your weight into it. This tip has a small blade at the end, giving it the ablitiy to slice as well as puncture. Consider where the other hand is when the additional force is added: The thumb and next two fingers hold the flap of skin, leaving the palm and potentially the veins of the wrist in the path the sharp bits |
When we suture for surgery the needle for skin has a cutting edge, not just a sharp point. Tapered needles, which are sharp only at the point, are only used on deeper tissues which are softer than skin. Surgical needles tend to be curved because the work can only be done from one side of the body, unlike textiles. The curved needle also has the advantage of requiring additional tools to hold both the needle and the tissue which make it less likely to injure the one doing the work.

Needle Holder |
 
Forceps
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Cutting Needle |
Since pigs are often used as a human analog and clearly a needle with an edge is necessary for skin why wouldn't we just use surgical needles? There's a guage problem. The thickest suture material is usually only as heavy guage as fishing line (apx .7 mm). Cooking twine is significantly thicker at 2mm.
Solution
Finding a source for a trussing needle that is guarunteed to work is tricky. So far Mound is the only manufacturer I've found specifically advertising sharp edges on a straight trussing needle, without the handle. I'd want to pair it with a set of long curved forceps or Long Sponge Forceps
, just to keep away from the veins of the wrist.