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You must have been watching an older documentary.
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Based upon your post, it sounds like the same one. Note that I did talk about filling the gaps with the closest living species as the documentary suggests. I believe, but am not sure, that the documentary stated that we may find short stretches of usable DNA, but nothing approaching an entire genome - hence the need for retro-engineering.
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Which brings me to the idea that somebody might try to recreate Homo Erectus, Habilis or Australopithecus and use them for heavy work. DNA manipulation is a very dangerous game, and needs to be closely monitored by government.
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Hmm, well would human rights extend to other members of the homo genus, or would we simply use the standard of animal rights for them? In that case, they could technically be owned as people own pets today. It wouldn't be much different from using chimps for research. They are primates after all, but we don't give them civil rights. Only with homo erectus, we'd have a better subject for testing...
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What's the point? It's not like we had too few cattle, it's that we have too little area to plant soy and other stuff the cattle eat. If you'r worried about food scarcity, you should consider eating less meat, not more.
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The same reason we genetically modify existing species - to produce higher yields of higher quality food (both in terms of taste and nutrition) more efficiently. Meat in moderation is a healthy part of a balanced diet. If we could introduce a new form of meat that could be more efficiently produced, then the quality of life for people in general could potentially improve. Of course mammoths might not be the best example, it is certainly possible that ancient plant DNA could help us improve the yields of existing crops, or allow us to make entirely new foods.