The DEMETER VRE will support the early identification of issues in the food (and feed) chain. This VRE has been developed to act like a knowledge exchange portal for this area. As a specific feature it is planned to demonstrate how KNIME-based data mining workflows can be shared and applied from within the VRE. The DEMETER project has been initiated to support the current EFSA procedure for emerging risks identification by establishing a collaborative platform to allow EU member states and EFSA to share data, knowledge and methods for the identification of emerging food-related risk. DEMETER will develop a shared vision of a Collaborative Emerging Risk Knowledge Exchange Framework and indicate how the methods and tools, as developed within DEMETER, fit into this shared vision.