Screengrab | The French Alim’confiance application and website rate the hygiene conditions at restaurants and cheeseshops, bakeries and supermarkets.

French diners are now able to gauge the cleanliness of their favourite restaurants or bistros with the help of a handy new app which reveals the scores received during the latest official sanitary inspection at the venue.

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The Alim’confiance application was launched by the French government earlier this week in a bid to improve overall French food standards by making sanitary hygiene findings public. The results can be viewed via an interactive map featuring smiley faces displaying different moods.

The venues listed range from restaurants, butchers and fishmongers to bakeries and cheese shops and have been ranked on a four-point scale, from “in need of urgent correction” to “very satisfactory”, based on the scores received in their latest hygiene inspection. The results are available for one year since the date of the latest sanitary check and are also available online.

When it comes to abattoirs, the app also tells consumers whether the establishment is considered to live up to animal welfare standards – giving consumers a more informed choice of what they actually put on their plates.

On Tuesday, the app already listed the results of some 1,500 inspections, with the bulk of them having been carried out at establishments in Paris in March, and with tens of thousands more expected to be added to the list by the end of this year.

The government said that nine European countries – Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania and Norway - have already made this type of hygiene information public, and with good results.

“In all countries where this system has been set up, there has been an improvement when it comes to the sanitary levels of establishments,” the agriculture ministry said in a statement.

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