In Germany the last outbreak of Aujeszky's disease (AD) in a holding of domestic pigs had been officially confirmed in the year 2000, and, since February 2003 Germany is officially confirmed free of AD. Since this time the AD free status is monitored according to chapter II of the annex of the regulation for the protection against Aujeszky's disease. As an alternative monitoring protocol two variants of a two step random sampling scheme is proposed which reduces the sample size from a complete investigation of all domestic pig holdings to a sample of pig fattening and pig breeding farms. Within the random selected farms, pigs are sampled as usual according to chapter II of the annex of the regulation for the protection against Aujeszky's disease. In this paper, the measures to be taken in case of a positive AD result are discussed: In case of conformation of an AD suspicion it is proposed to establish a restriction area. In addition measures based on regionalisation are proposed in order to maintain the AD free status for areas outside established restriction areas. The proposed monitoring schemes potentiate an enormous reduction of sampling costs, but call for a revision of the regulation for the protection against Aujeszky's disease.