Why is process.env.NODE_ENV in my vuejs custom element?

I'm trying to create a custom html element with vuejs and vite. But every time I build the element, process.env.NODE_ENV is added to the js and so using the component outside of vuejs fails. My goal is an element I can use in any generic html file. I've done this before with stenciljs, but not with vuejs and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I have no reference to env in my vue file.

My build command: "build:simple": "vite build --config ./src/components/simple/vite.simple.config.ts"

vite.simple.config.ts:

import vue from '@vitejs/plugin-vue';
import { defineConfig } from 'vite';

const componentName = 'simple';

const entry = `src/components/${componentName}/index.ts`;
const fileName = `${componentName}`;
const outDir = `./dist/${componentName}`;
const name = `${componentName}`;

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [
    vue( {customElement: true} ),
  ],
  logLevel: 'info',
  build: {
    outDir: outDir,
    lib: {
      entry: entry,
      name: name,
      fileName: fileName
    },
  },
});

My index.ts file:

import { defineCustomElement } from 'vue';
import Simple from "./Simple.vue";

const SimpleElement = defineCustomElement(Simple);

function loader() {
  const ceRegistry = window.customElements
  if ( ceRegistry === null) {
    return;
  } else {
    if ( typeof(ceRegistry.get('my-simple') ) === 'undefined') {
      ceRegistry.define('my-simple', SimpleElement);
    }
    return;
  }
}

const ceRegistry = window.customElements;
if ( ceRegistry !== null) {
  if ( typeof(ceRegistry.get('my-simple') ) === 'undefined') {
    ceRegistry.define('my-simple', SimpleElement);
  }
}


declare module 'vue' {
  export interface GlobalComponents {
    'SimpleElement': typeof SimpleElement
  }
}

export { Simple, SimpleElement, loader }

The only thing at all complicated I'm doing is setting the paths to the various files based on a variable, which I'm doing because I want to re-use the config for different components and then just change the componentName variable each time. Based on https://vuejs.org/guide/extras/web-components, this should do it. But I've got over 100 instances of process.env.NODE_ENV in my js, so it is constantly failing.

I'm using vue 3.3.4, vitejs/plugin-vue 4.4.0, and vite 5.0.10.

Any ideas?

Edit for clarification: The code is sort of duplicated because I wasn't sure if I would need to import the loader function and run it in the consuming html. When I create a custom html element with stencil, I can import the loader function into an angular app and run it to register the component. So I just wasn't sure if I should do all of the registration in the index.ts or create a function and export it.

Here are two examples of the code from simple.js (188 references to process.env.NODE_ENV total):

const K = process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production" ? Object.freeze({}) : {},
ht = process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production" ? Object.freeze([]) : []

And 2 from simple.umd.js (188 references to process.env.NODE_ENV total):

const L=process.env.NODE_ENV!=="production"?Object.freeze({}):{},
ct=process.env.NODE_ENV!=="production"?Object.freeze([]):[]

I took my index.ts file down to just this and I still have 51 references in each of the js files:

import { defineCustomElement } from 'vue';
import Simple from "./Simple.vue";

const SimpleElement = defineCustomElement(Simple);