The way I see it, we can't set up a universal scale for "vegan-ness" - in grams, milligrams or micrograms. The degree of tiny amounts of animal products that vegans may consume (because other solutions would not fall within the "avoid animal products as much as practical and possible") has to be set by each person. Otherwise, some vegan would start to take this seriously and claim that eg. a few milligrams are allowed, but grams aren't allowed.
One thing is that "allowed" shouldn't be in there at all. We are allowed to do what we want, but we don't want to use animal products.
Some people choose a gradual transition to becoming vegans, and some vegans may, in the middle of their "vegan-ness" slip, and take an hour without being vegan, and then go back to be vegans again. The bottom line is that it's all about whether we want to fool ourselves or not: if that's what we want, we'll manage to fool ourselves anyway.
If a vegan says that he ate a hot dog that day because everything else wasn't practical or possible, I'd say that there's great likelihood that he's fooling himself. Vegans don't eat hot dogs, and if he is going to an area where only hot dogs are available, he could have brought some fruit or something else. But since being vegan is based on actually not wanting to eat hot dogs, we don't need to police each other and accuse him for not being vegan. If he doesn't want to bring his own food or find something else, he'll probably eat more hot dogs anyway, and accusing him for not being a perfect vegan probably won't help. Motivation helps.
We can't be "perfect vegans" in a non-vegan society, but it's more "perfect" to remain a vegan throughout life than to be so hard on yourself that you give up after a few months of years - and again, since "as much as practical and possible" is baked into the very definition of vegan, someone who avoids animal products as much as practical and possible already fits perfectly in with that definition anyway.
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