Why are mushrooms safe for everyone to touch at the supermarket?
Food safety laws generally apply to most food you can touch with your hands at supermarkets - such as loose leaf spinach, bread rolls in the bakery, and anything at the deli. When handling these foods, you need to use tongs (or wear food safety gloves).
But mushrooms seem to be 'safe' for everyone to touch with their hands. There are never tongs near them (at least at any supermarket I've seen) and everyone uses their hands.
Why is this? What makes mushrooms special?
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A major reason produce can be sold loose without tongs is that you're supposed to wash it just before preparing it anyway. You couldn't wash your baked goods. How effective this washing is, is of course another matter now we don't have to wash the mud off and a token rinse is probably typical.
Some produce, including mushrooms but also strawberries etc., could easily be damaged by tongs anyway.
There isn't anything special, there is no reason they should be treated any differently than other exposed and handled foods. It's not the food that is dangerous, it's the human based disease that is spread by food handling that is the issue.
I don't advocate gloves in food handling, I advocate good hand washing. Gloves make people sloppy and I think it makes contamination worse than without.
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