You're not perfect either, your phone, your tyres, your sugar.
Short answer: Veganism means avoiding harm as far as practicable, never perfection. Unavoidable traces don't excuse the harm you can avoid, like the food on your plate.
A trace of animal residue baked invisibly into a supply chain you can't escape is not the same as a deliberate, daily, optional choice to eat an animal.
The Vegan Society, definition of veganism
The objection
“There’s animal product in your tyres, your phone, the bone-char that refines some sugar, the roads you drive on. You’re not actually consistent, so why should I take your moral lectures seriously?”
The answer
Notice what this argument is really doing. It attacks you rather than the practice of eating animals. And even if every charge landed, the bacon on your plate would be no more justified than before. “You’re a hypocrite” gives someone a reason to dislike the messenger, not a reason to eat meat. The two come apart completely.
The charge mostly misses anyway, because it attacks a claim no serious vegan makes. Veganism is defined as reducing animal exploitation “as far as is possible and practicable”, never as achieving an impossible zero. In a world where animal residues are baked into supply chains you can’t see or escape, perfection is beyond anyone’s reach. The vegan position has always been “avoid what you can,” and what you can avoid most easily, most completely, with the biggest impact, is eating animals. A trace residue and a deliberate, daily, optional choice are two different things.
Watch how selectively the “perfection” standard gets applied, too. No one tells a charity donor “you didn’t give everything, so your giving is worthless.” We accept that doing some good beats doing none in every other domain. Demanding flawlessness from vegans specifically, then using the inevitable failure to dismiss the whole idea, is a fully general excuse for never changing anything.
So strip it back. You can’t avoid all harm; nobody can. You can stop paying for animals to be bred and killed for your dinner, and still owning a smartphone does nothing to change that. Unavoidable harm has never licensed the harm you choose.