Mike Humberston writes

If strawberries are supposed to be covered in fungicide then why is it that if I
keep strawberries in my fridge for more than a few days they rapidly become
covered in white fuzz?

For pesticides there is a 'last spray to harvest' interval.

This is to ensure that the pesticide levels in the produce when sold is
below the required limit. For a 'programmed' spray plan the 'last spray'
is timed to easily miss the *earliest* harvest date because it's
unsalable until after that date.

However the weather is fickle. You have (for something like
strawberries) to allow for the hot spell that brings them on quick, so
the typical spray to harvest period is much more than the minimum.

This mostly isn't a problem because fungi usually need very special
conditions to attack plants successfully. They need the right
combination of rainfall, humidity, temperature AND the spores must be
there in significant quantity. Keep the spore level very low and it
takes them a long time to mount an effective attack that is visible,
even if the plants are unprotected. So you get 'effective protection'
for some (significant) time after the spray has vanished.

The uk regulations and inspections are very harsh, not to mention most
growers grow in full view of dozens, sometimes thousands, of people
(like roads) making cheating highly risky. This is NOT so in many other
EU countries and effectively non-existent in most second and third world
countries. This is one reason, out of many, why UK producers are being
put out of business by outside producers.

Remember france, for many years, exported three times the amount of
organic wheat than it produced. The fraud was caught, but it took years
and was exceptionally obvious.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
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