Packers continue their push toward playoffs as they host the injury-riddled Saints

New Orleans (5-9) at Green Bay (10-4)

Monday, 8:15 p.m. EST, ABC, ESPN

BetMGM NFL Odds: Packers by 13½

Against the spread: Saints 6-8; Packers 8-6

Series record: Packers lead 18-10

Last meeting: Packers won 18-17 at Green Bay on Sept. 24, 2023.

Last week: Saints lost 20-19 at home to the Washington Commanders. Packers won 30-13 at Seattle.

Saints offense: overall (15-T), rush (11), pass (20), scoring (18)

Packers offense: overall (4), rush (4-T), pass (11), scoring (7)

Saints defense: overall (30), rush (27), pass (28), scoring (13-T)

Packers defense: overall (10), rush (9), pass (15), scoring (8)

Turnover differential: Saints plus-1, Packers plus-10

DE Chase Young is coming off a two-sack performance against the Commanders, who selected him out of Ohio State with the second overall pick in the 2020 draft. Green Bay’s offensive line has done a nice job of pass protection this season, but Young is talented enough to cause Packers QB Jordan Love plenty of headaches.

LB Edgerrin Cooper was the NFC defensive player of the week for the second time this season after getting eight tackles, picking off a pass and forcing a fumble with a sack against Seattle. The rookie second-round pick from Texas A&M is the first Packer to be the NFC defensive player of the week twice in the same season since Clay Matthews in Green Bay’s 2010 Super Bowl championship season.

Saints offensive line vs. Packers pass rush: Green Bay’s pass rush has been inconsistent, but the Packers are coming off a seven-sack performance against Seattle. Kingsley Enagbare led the way with two sacks. QB Spencer Rattler could start for New Orleans in place of an injured Derek Carr and the Saints won’t have much of a chance if he doesn’t have time to throw. The Saints are allowing just two sacks per game, putting them in a tie for eighth in the league.

Carr has an injury to his left (non-throwing) hand, although the Saints have said he will not be placed on injured reserve and that his status will be updated day to day. ... RB Alvin Kamara has a groin and adductor injury. Saints interim head coach Darren Rizzi updated Kamara's status Thursday by saying, "to be honest, it doesn’t look great for this week. ... Packers CB Jaire Alexander (knee) has missed four straight games, but he practiced fully Thursday. … Packers S Javon Bullard (ankle) didn’t play against the Seahawks. … Packers LB Quay Walker left the Seahawks game with an ankle issue.

The Packers rallied from a 17-point, fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Saints last season in Love’s first home start. Green Bay made its comeback after Carr left with a shoulder injury. New Orleans’ Blake Grupe missed a 46-yard field goal that would have put the Saints ahead with 1:05 remaining. Green Bay’s Rashan Gary had three sacks in that game. … This is the first time the Packers and Saints have met at Lambeau Field in December or later. The Packers’ lone December home game against the Saints came in Milwaukee in 1973. …The Packers have won three of their past four home matchups with the Saints. Six of the past seven Packers-Saints matchups at Lambeau Field have been decided by single digits.

The Packers have won eight of their past 10 games and can clinch a playoff berth before Monday’s game with a loss or tie by the Atlanta Falcons coupled with a loss or tie by either the Los Angeles Rams or Seattle Seahawks on Sunday. Even if the Packers don’t get that help on Sunday, they can clinch a playoff spot by beating the Saints. … Rattler came off the bench and passed for 135 yards and a TD without an interception during the second half of last week’s game and led New Orleans on four straight scoring drives totaling 19 points. ... Rattler went 0-3 as a starter earlier this season. ... Saints QB Jake Haener made his first-career start last week but was replaced after the first half. ... Kamara had his 25th TD receiving last week to become the fourth player in NFL history (joining Marshall Faulk, Lenny Moore and Christian McCaffrey) with at least that many TD receptions and 50 or more TDs rushing (Kamara has 60). Kamara left last week’s game 7 scrimmage yards short of his fourth-career 1,500-yard season. ... Saints WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling had team-high 64 yards receiving last week and has 50 or more yards receiving in four of his past five games. Valdes-Scantling had 123 receptions for 2,153 yards and 13 TDs in 59 games with Green Bay from 2018 to 2021. ... Saints DE Cameron Jordan had two sacks last week, his 25th career multiple sack game. Jordan ranks second among active players with 120 1/2 sacks. ... Saints DE Carl Granderson had a sack last week and has 5 1/2 sacks in 2024. ... Saints DL Bryan Bresee has a sack in three of his past four games. ... LB Demario Davis led the Saints with a season-high 14 tackles and had two tackles for loss and a sack in Week 15. Davis has 104 tackles in 2024, his eighth straight 100-tackle season. ... Saints S Tyrann Mathieu had his seventh career forced fumble last week. ... This is the 32nd straight year the Packers have played on “Monday Night Football.” That represents the longest such streak in “Monday Night Football” history. … Love has thrown seven touchdown passes without an interception over his past four games. Love was picked off 11 times in his first eight starts of the season. … The Packers have scored at least 30 points in each of their past four games. … Green Bay has allowed only five sacks over its past seven games. That’s the first time the Packers have yielded so few sacks in a seven-game stretch within the same season since 2007. … Packers S Xavier McKinney has seven interceptions to tie Detroit’s Kerby Joseph for the NFL lead. His seven interceptions are the most by a Packer since Hall of Famer Charles Woodson had seven in 2011. … Packers RB Josh Jacobs has rushed for 1,147 yards to rank third in the NFL entering Week 16, behind Philadelphia’s Saquon Barkley (1,688) and Baltimore’s Derrick Henry (1,474). … Packers TE Tucker Kraft has seven touchdown catches. The only tight ends with more are Baltimore’s Mark Andrews and San Francisco’s George Kittle, with eight each. … Gary has had a sack in four of his past five games.

If your team is desperate to add a running back, New Orleans’ Kendre Miller is probably available on the waiver wire and may be worth picking up. The 2023 third-round pick from TCU had nine carries for 46 yards against the Commanders and figures to lead the Saints rushing attack if Alvin Kamara’s groin injury prevents him from playing.

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

New Orleans Saints defensive end Chase Young (99) sacks Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels (5) in the second half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)

New Orleans Saints tight end Foster Moreau (87) celebrates after he makes a catch in the second half of an NFL football game against the Washington Commanders in New Orleans, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Green Bay Packers' Kingsley Enagbare reacts to a sack during the second half of an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Green Bay Packers' Jordan Love runs during the second half of an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Green Bay Packers' Romeo Doubs celebrates his touchdown catch with Jordan Love during the second half of an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)

PARIS (AP) — Pastry chef Arnaud Delmontel rolls out dough for croissants and pains au chocolat that later emerge golden and fragrant from the oven in his Paris patisserie.

The price for the butter so essential to the pastries has shot up in recent months, by 25% since September alone, Delmontel says. But he is refusing to follow some competitors who have started making their croissants with margarine.

“It’s a distortion of what a croissant is,” Delmontel said. "A croissant is made with butter.”

One of life’s little pleasures — butter spread onto warm bread or imbuing cakes and seared meats with its flavor — has gotten more expensive across Europe in the last year. After a stretch of post-pandemic inflation that the war in Ukraine worsened, the booming cost of butter is another blow for consumers with holiday treats to bake.

Across the 27-member European Union, the price of butter rose 19% on average from October 2023 to October 2024, including by 49% in Slovakia, and 40% in Germany and the Czech Republic, according to figures provided to The Associated Press by the EU's executive arm. Reports from individual countries indicate the cost has continued to go up in the months since.

In Germany, a 250-gram (8.8-ounce) block of butter now generally costs between 2.40 and 4 euros ($2.49-$4.15), depending on the brand and quality.

The increase is the result of a global shortage of milk caused by declining production, including in the United States and New Zealand, one of the world’s largest butter exporters, according to economist Mariusz Dziwulski, a food and agricultural market analyst at PKO Bank Polski in Warsaw.

European butter typically has a higher fat content than the butter sold in the United States. It also is sold by weight in standard sizes, so food producers can’t hide price hikes by reducing package sizes, something known as " shrinkflation.”

A butter shortage in France in the 19th century led to the invention of margarine, but the French remain some of the continent's heaviest consumers of butter, using the ingredient with abandon in baked goods and sauces.

Butter is so important in Poland that the government keeps a stockpile of it in the country's strategic reserves, as it does national gas and COVID-19 vaccines. The government announced Tuesday that it was releasing some 1,000 tons of frozen butter to stabilize prices.

The price of butter rose 11.4% between early November and early December in Poland, and 49.2% over the past year to nearly 37 Polish zlotys, or $9 per kilo (2.2 pounds) for the week ending Dec. 8, according to the National Support Center for Agriculture, a government agency.

“Every month butter gets more expensive,” Danuta Osinska, a 77-year-old Polish woman, said while shopping recently at a discount grocery chain in Warsaw.

She and her husband love butter — on bread, in scrambled eggs, in creamy desserts. But they also struggle to pay for medications on their meager pensions. So the couple is eating less butter and more margarine, even though they find the taste of the substitute spread inferior.

“There is no comparison,” Osinska said. “Things are getting harder and harder.”

The cost of butter in Poland has become a political issue. With a presidential election scheduled next year, opponents of centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk are trying to blame him and his Civic Platform party. The party's presidential candidate is seeking to blame the national bank's governor, who hails from an opposing political camp, for the inflation.

Some consumers decide where to shop based on the price of butter, which has led to price wars between grocery chains that in some cases kept prices artificially low in the past to the detriment of dairy farmers, according to Agnieszka Maliszewska, the director of the Polish Chamber of Milk.

Maliszewska thinks domestic, EU-specific and global issues explain butter inflation. She argues that the primary cause is a shortage of milk fat due to dairy farmers shutting down their enterprises across Europe because of slim profit markets and hard work.

She and others also cite higher energy costs from Russia’s war in Ukraine as impacting milk production. There is some debate about the potential effect of climate change. Maliszewska doesn't see a link.

Economist Dziwulski, however, thinks droughts may be a factor in reducing production. Falling milk prices last year also discouraged investments and pushed dairy producers in the EU to make more cheese, which offered better profitability, he said.

An outbreak of bluetongue disease, an insect-borne viral disease that is harmless to humans but can be fatal for sheep, cows and goats, may also play a role, Dziwulski said.

The U.S. saw a butter price spike in 2022, when the average price jumped 33% to $4.88 per pound over the course of the year, according to government data. Dairy farmers struggled with feed costs and hot temperatures.

U.S. butter prices fell in 2023 before rising again this year, hitting a peak of $5 per pound in September. Higher grocery prices in general weighed on U.S. voters during the presidential election in November.

Southern European countries, which rely far more heavily on olive oil, are less affected by the butter inflation — or they just don't consider it as important since they consume so much less.

Since last year the cost of butter shot up 44% on average in Italy, according to dairy market analysis firm CLAL. Italy is Europe's seventh-largest butter producer, but olive oil is the preferred fat, even for some desserts. The price of butter therefore is not causing the same alarm there as it is in butter-addicted parts of Europe.

Delmontel, the Paris pastry chef, said the rising costs put business owners like him under pressure. Along with refusing to switch out butter for margarine, he has not reduced the size of his croissants. But some other French bakers are making smaller pastries to control costs, he said.

“Or else you squeeze it out of your profit margin,” Delmontel said.

Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland. Colleen Barry in Milan, Raf Casert in Brussels and Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit contributed.

French baker Arnaud Delmontel shows the layers of butter and dough in a butter croissants in his bakery in Paris, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024 as butter has shot up in price across Europe in recent months, adding more pain to consumers this holiday season after years of inflation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine.(AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

French baker Arnaud Delmontel bakes butter croissants in Paris, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024 as butter has shot up in price across Europe in recent months, adding more pain to consumers this holiday season after years of inflation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine.(AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

French baker Arnaud Delmontel bakes butter croissants and "pains au chocolat" in his bakery in Paris, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024 as butter has shot up in price across Europe in recent months, adding more pain to consumers this holiday season after years of inflation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine.(AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

An employee removes bread for the oven in a bakery in Paris, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024 as butter has shot up in price across Europe in recent months, adding more pain to consumers this holiday season after years of inflation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine.(AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Butter, which has been rising fast in price in much of Europe, is displayed in a grocery store in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

French baker Arnaud Delmontel talks about butter, its price and quality in his bakery in Paris, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024 as butter has shot up in price across Europe in recent months, adding more pain to consumers this holiday season after years of inflation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine.(AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)