Just before Christmas in 1996, Greenpeace organised an action in Hamburg drawing an attention of German and Czech public to "danger" of feeding corn imported in USA. It concerned corn made of genetically modified seeds, therefore genetically modified organisms (GMO).Shocking reaction of competent authorities in the Czech Republic and of our journalists hand in hand with fear and ignorance caused uproar.
At universities and academic institutions, they realised then, it did not give a good picture of the country, where Gregor Mendel founded fundaments of genetics and they tried according to their capacity to "pay their debt". After one year of explaining that transgenic (genetically modified) plants do have their risks but the risks are no greater than of other crops it was clear the results would never be adequate to efforts without having a certain base.
That was the reason why the Institute of Biotechnology, Charles University and colleagues from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Prague, South Bohemian University, Ceske Budejovice, Masaryk University, Brno and the Czech Academy of Science founded an Association BIOTREND in December 1997.
The founding members of BIOTREND Association were:
| Dr. Milan Bezdek |
| Prof. Katerina Demnerova |
| Prof. Jaroslav Drobnik |
| Ing. Irena Krumlova |
| Doc. Milos Ondrej |
| Doc. Zdenek Opatrny |
| Doc. Petr Pikalek |
| Prof. Jan Smarda |
| Ing. Helena Stepankova |
| Prof. Zdenek Vodrazka |
| Prof. Vaclav Paces |
The name of the Association BIOTREND has proved unsuitable in the course of time since it turned out that the name "BIOTREND" had already been registered by another legal person in Czech Republic and abroad as well. Therefore the association adopted another name when publishing its Internet web site; the name was BIOTRIN. In March 2001, the Board of the association decided to change the name completely 
. Since May 2001, the BIOTRIN Association exists as a successor of BIOTREND Association, which means it took over all its tasks originating from the Articles of the Association. The foundation charter says:
| “...contribute to the education particularly by providing information on research and other issues from the field of modern biotechnology mainly in connection with genetically modified organisms to general and academic public, civil servants, competent governmental authorities, institutions, associations and other subjects in order to improve the knowledge and spreading of scientific information in the agreement with world-wide trends.” |
The methods used by the Association are following:
